Bluebeam vs. PDF Xchange Viewer and Editor vs. SYSessential Complete PDF Program

As stated before, the mobile application is a great companion to the desktop version. Either one works great in viewing, editing and saving documents. While the measurement tool is handy to have, we have found the precision to be lacking when measuring scaled drawings (construction design drawings). While it is a good rough place to start for measurements, we wouldn't recommend relying on the precision of the measurements taken on something with a very large scale.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Overlaying pdf drawings to identify changes made by architects.
• Scaling dimensions when the architect has not provided required dimensions to proceed with work in the field.
• Hyperlinking construction documents with required information makes it much easier to look through multiple sheets in less time.

Incentivized

• Seamless integration with Office Tools, AutoCAD, and BricsCAD
• Powerful editing suite of tools to markup and share PDFs
• Power API for extended capabilities

• 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

• It is not as intuitive as some PDF editors.
• I often use the search function to find the feature I am looking for.

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

It does everything I need, such as OCR, redaction, Bates stamping, bookmarking, and handling large PDF files without crashing. It also does well with the extraction and addition of documents.

Incentivized

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.

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

The application had no issues (we did not contact support) and that's why I give a 10.

Incentivized

Bluebeam is a diverse program with many functions and tools, whereas competitive programs only specialize in one or few tasks. Although there are many tools within the program, users can still quickly learn how to use the program to best fit their needs. There is always a help tab for any assistance needed.

Incentivized

I have had problems with other software crashing with large PDF files, except for Adobe. However, Adobe Acrobat is very expensive, and this has done as well for me as Adobe Acrobat. I also dislike monthly fees since income for our business can rise and fall. I prefer to spend the money when I have the income and then not have expenses during the low times.

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

• Positive: Efficient because it's easy to learn, saving training time.
• Positive: Adding comments and editing is a breeze, saving peer review hours.
• Negative: We still have to rely on Acrobat DC to export individual pages into separate PDFs.

Incentivized