Abstract: A method is taught for determining construction quantity takeoff information of a drawing representative of a construction project having a plurality of information units including at least units of construction project information and information regarding a plurality of items associated with a drawing in an information gathering system. The method includes applying an indicia representative of a selected information unit of the plurality of information units to the information gathering system and determining the selected information unit by the information gathering system in accordance with the applied indicia. Indexing the selected information unit and storing the indexed information unit in an indexed takeoff base are also included. Image data representative of the drawing is provided and the image data is indexed for storing the image data in the indexed database in association with indexed information unit.