constructionnotesmanager.com

What It Is

Construction Notes Manager (CNM) is a construction note management tool for AutoCAD and BricsCAD. Its core goal is to automate the traditional workflow of manually placing construction notes, organizing drawing note schedules, and calculating quantities. The website states that the tool has been in continuous use since 1998 and, after 25 years of paid licensing, is now available for free as Free Libre Open Source Software.

Core Features

CNM is highly specialized. It can insert bubble notes into leaders, with support for 8 different shapes, 2 styles, and up to 9 phases. It can also count the number of bubble notes or total the quantities entered by users in each bubble. For project-level management, it can read a project note list, generate a key list of used notes by drawing or tab, and optionally include total quantities. In addition, it can write per-drawing quantity details to a CSV file, making it easier to display and process the data later in spreadsheets.

Pricing and Open Source

According to the main text, CNM used to be paid licensed software but is now freely available to the public with the full-featured version included. The site describes it as free libre open source software, but the captured content does not disclose a specific open-source license, code repository, or contribution guidelines, so the maturity of its open-source governance still needs further verification.

Pros and Cons

Its strengths are its focused use case, its ability to reduce repetitive work for drafting teams around construction notes and quantity takeoffs, and its support for both AutoCAD and BricsCAD. CSV export also helps it fit into common spreadsheet-based workflows. User feedback suggests it delivers practical value in terms of speed and organization. The downsides are that the website provides limited detail: it does not explain installation steps, compatible versions, APIs/SDKs, system requirements, or full documentation. Its capabilities are also clearly limited to CAD construction notes and quantity calculations, making it unsuitable for general developer collaboration or code-oriented tooling scenarios.

Who It’s For

CNM is suitable for civil, site, architectural, or engineering design teams, especially users who still maintain large volumes of construction drawing notes and quantity schedules in AutoCAD/BricsCAD. If a team’s pain points include repeated numbering, counting, and generating drawing note indexes, CNM offers strong value for money.

Access from China

The main text does not provide information about access regions, mirrors, or network availability. The accessibility of constructionnotesmanager.com from mainland China cannot be determined from the text alone, so it is marked as unknown.