Bluebeam vs. Flip PDF Pro for Mac

The program is great for editing construction drawings, stamping/approving official documents and overlaying revised documents to see design changes. You can use it as an estimating takeoff tool, estimating database, document control, cloud document storage, the list goes on! Bluebeam poses many applications for the user to utilize for the desired needs. There may be some other software that has one specific function that can perform the specific task better, but Bluebeam is a holistic program with many tools for use.

Incentivized

It's great for presentations. It makes even the most drab presentation more interesting, and gives you the ability to add animated elements to your presentation. Everybody uses Microsoft PowerPoint, but for Mac it's a little slow and unresponsive. Flip PDF Pro for Mac kind of solves that issue – you can build your project in InDesign, export it out, then import it into Flip PDF Pro. It sounds like a bit of a process but it's actually very easy. Any designer can pick it up and run with it.

Incentivized

• Once you set Bluebeam Revu as your default PDF handler, it launches immediately when clicking a PDF to open. The speed with which it opens documents is impressive.
• Creating PDF's out of other documents, such as Word, Excel, JPG's, etc. is simple.
• Digitally signing documents is a simple, secure process. You can keep your signature password-protected, yet still access it quickly.
• The Bluebeam Revu mobile application ( I use the iOS version on an iPad Pro), is awesome. Not only does it handle PDF's like you would expect it to, it allows for effortless digital signing of documents on the fly. Nice to be able to quickly sign a document and email right back out from the tablet no matter where I am.

Incentivized

• You can customize or add certain things like your title, logo, toolbar icon appearance, background, fonts, etc. It feels a lot like a design program – which is nice, as a designer.
• The program allows you to embed almost any sort of media into your flip book – GIFs are easy to add in and work with, they add a dynamic element to your presentation (which wasn't possible before).
• You can create these things called “hot spots” – basically certain trigger areas in your document that can activate something when clicked – like take you to a e-commerce site, for example.

Incentivized

• If you have several tabs open and you try to drag one out for a side by side view then you do not have all the modification options and you have to combine them back together.
• There is a lag time when hitting the print option.
• There is also a lag time when opening files, sometimes I think the window is frozen.
• I wish the basic version also had basic file editing, as in editing a document as Adobe does.

Incentivized

• My documents sometimes had a problem with import and output – sometimes it would take a substansial amount of time to export something.
• In their mulit-lingual version, our freelance linguist caught some mistakes, some words were not translated or translated into other languages – which can make us look pretty bad.
• There's a limit on audio you can output for each page in your document – it had to be "one audio for two pages".

Incentivized

Bluebeam is a powerful PDF viewer and mark-up tool. We are more familiar with it than Adobe Acrobat Pro or other viewers, and it has more features geared towards construction document managers than Acrobat Pro does.

Incentivized

I'm constantly finding that Bluebeam Revu does more than I knew it could. And when I find something that it can't do, I've found that Bluebeam truly listens to its user base and will work to incorporate any good suggestion when feasible.

Incentivized

Its hard for me to give a rating on this one as we rarely have to use the support feature for Bluebeam. However, when we have used it, they have been ultra supportive in helping us get exactly what we needed. I know another engineer was trying to figure out a feature and the rep gave a detailed tutorial on how to complete the task

Incentivized

We feel there is not another program out there that would compare to Bluebeam at this current time. Some of the other programs out there do not include studio or the overlaying process which is one of our main uses. The ease of hyperlinking makes this product stand out the most.

Incentivized

There are several PDF conversion programs out there, but really Flip PDF Pro for Mac is probably the best one that I've encountered. The amount of versatility in the program really sells it to me. It works just like a design program, but as a customizable PDF, and it's easy-to-use interface really helps speed things up with our workflow and process. There's a lot of competitors out there, but none of them really stack up.

Incentivized

• A major positive aspect is being able to take your computer home without taking the entire set of paper drawings. They have made it so easy to navigate a set of drawings that I can work at home using only the digital drawings.
• Collaboration with owners and architects has been a great feature. Setting up a Bluebeam studio and having everyone get in and mark things up, then having the architect be able to go in and see what markups have been added, has made the constructability review process much much better.
• Even when not working on drawings, Bluebeam is a very good tool for working with standard PDF documents. The markup tools are very easy to use.
• The negative aspect is the takeoff function because some people would like estimators to use the Bluebeam takeoff because it would make their job easier down the road; however, the actual act of doing a full scale takeoff in Bluebeam would require much more time.

Incentivized

• It makes our presentations more interesting and dynamic.
• It allows us to go around using Microsoft PowerPoint (which is a little slow and unresponsive on Mac).
• Using its animation and hotlink elements, we're able to broaden our services with this program. It really helps out a lot.

Incentivized