Purple Hammer

What is Purple Hammer?

Desktop takeoff and estimating software for Mac and Windows that measures lengths, areas, counts, and volumes off PDF drawings and prices them in built-in spreadsheets using cost databases and assemblies, so estimators do not move quantities into Excel by hand, and that auto-aligns revised drawing sets to show what changed between revisions

Vendor submission July 2026 from Ari Isaacs at Purple Hammer, part of shapedo Ltd. The vendor lists a native MCP server for AI agents, which AEC Hub has not tested.

Key strengths

• Measures and prices in one application, with live worksheets, cost databases, assemblies, and estimating formulas instead of an Excel round trip
• auto-aligns a revised drawing set and blink-compares it so you re-price only what moved
• Magic Measure detects an area from one click and Magic Count counts by example
• exports to Excel with formulas intact and runs natively on Mac and Windows

Common use cases

Limitations to know

Desktop software rather than a browser tool, with no team collaboration features described. The vendor's speed claims, including a 500-sheet set opening in about a second, are not independently tested. Takeoff and estimating only, so it does not handle scheduling, project management, or accounting.