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
PDF Xchange Viewer and Editor
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
PDF Xchange Viewer and Editor is a pdf editing and conversion software offering from Tracker Software Products. It includes features such as create pdf and convert to pdf.
PDF Xchange hits a sweet spot for me and my users. It is powerful, includes a full suite of creation, markup, and management tools. It is very affordable.
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.
If you'd like to switch from Adobe to a less expensive and more robust solution, you can choose PDF X Change. It does everything other expensive solutions do. We are using it to add some additional information on scanned PDF files and Sign them and it does it in a simple and easy way. You can use to combine multiple files into one, creating PDF from different resources.
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.
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.
There have been a couple of instances where I struggled to locate a feature that I thought was missing. A quick reply from support staff usually help me find and understand the feature better.
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.
It's easy to use, making it very efficient for us as we do not have to train additional people on how to use this software. It opens up documents quickly and saves quickly as well. Overall the usability is not an issue for us at all. It is also extremely easy to integrate it with other PDF programs.
Performance wise, PDF Xchange Viewer and Editor is flawless. It runs fast, and I haven't experienced any immediately crashing. The reports save quickly, and the document size is never an issue. It saves into a regular PDF, and we're able to open it on any other program or computer. All text boxes, features, and headers show up flawlessly on other programs.
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
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.
PDF Xchange hits a sweet spot for me and my users. It is powerful, includes a full suite of creation, markup, and management tools. It is very affordable.
Bluebeam is too much that isn't print and PDF related. It is EXPENSIVE ... more than $300 per person before almost mandatory additional training.
PDF Creator is good for PDF creation. It doesn't include markup and management tools.
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.
