Bluebeam Revu is a PDF management, control, and editing tool. It enables collaboration and markup within shared documents across projects’ life cycles and has takeoff and bid creation capabilities.
$240
per year per user
Foxit PDF SDK
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Foxit PDF SDK offers high performance pdf libraries to help developers build pdf technology. According to the vendor, key features include: Render PDFs: High performance PDF libraries to render PDF pages, page objects, annotations, and forms the way they were intended to be viewed: sharp, clear, accurate, and easy to read. Allows applications to view, zoom in, zoom out, and print PDF documents and forms. Reflow: PDF is a fixed-layout flat document format, it cannot…
Much better. The features are greater, the layout is better and you can just do so much more. The features alone and what you can do with it makes it worth it. Also, it allows for you to edit and create in a much more user friendly way. All of our engineers love using it …
I would say that Bluebeam has many more options and more capabilities versus Foxit PDF SDK. I would also say that Bluebeam is for users more advanced and comfortable with creating, editing, and combining PDF files. For the price comparison, I would say Foxit PDF SDK wins hands …
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.
Where FoxIt suites best is if you need an alternative to the big-name PDF editors. It's pretty easy to use and it's comparable to Adobe or any other document editor. It is best used when mocking up proposals for work, creating employee handbooks, putting together offer letters, and essentially any other important document. This is not suitable for creating brochures or pamphlets.
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.
It is a very cool development kit to integration different PDF functions.
It is user-friendly and convenient to work with.
It has great functionality for text. For example: adding quick markup, highlighting the text, underlining, and doing strikethrough, and adding signatures is pretty easy.
It offers to do encryption and add passwords for security.
Great search capability that helps finding the text without hassle.
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.
In the C# SDK, which is a wrapper of native C++ code. We need to be extra careful in coding and protecting the calls, because it can be very easy to crash the application in case of errors.
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.
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.
Our whole takeoff department uses the Foxit PDF SDK. To read plan files, produce pdf files, and take notes, we utilize it in conjunction with other tools. We may utilize the Foxit PDF SDK to read, edit, markup, print, and produce PDF files for internal use or to distribute to clients. Some of our users adore the software, but others choose to use alternative programs because they believe Foxit PDF SDK is too restrictive.
I rated this software very high on performance because it is really very quick on my Windows system. It can create any type of PDF files in seconds. It also gives good upload speed when I try to modify my documents for inserting digital signature space. It also gives very good encryption speed to secure my documents.
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
I would give it this rating because I personally have never had to contact support regarding Foxit PDF SDK or anything I am trying to do within the program. As I mentioned before, it is very user-friendly and easy to navigate. I think the program in itself lends support to the user because it is so user-friendly and has an easy to use interface.
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.
Adobe Sign can be really frustrating and difficult to log into, renew subscription, and other background functions. Tech support is between useless and non-existent. On the other hand, there is better control over when recipients have been contacted. Overall, Foxit PDF SDK is a much better product, especially for smaller businesses or ones which don't use it consistently every day, year-round (if that's you, you will get used to Adobe, and it will be less annoying.)
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.
