Bluebeam Revu Reviews

I love using Bluebeam in the construction industry. I have used it to review plans, edit plans and of course I use it for take offs and flattening pages that I have edited. I am able to put a signature on something, which is really easy to use. Everything about Bluebeam is awesome.

For all our PDF needs Bluebeam works for our entire company. From day to day PDF viewing, complicated contract markup and review, plan take-off and viewing; it really works for all of it. After a month or so of using the product I personally got used to it faster than I ever did other comparable PDF programs.

Bluebeam is a great tool to organize your drawings. They have made it extremely easy to rename drawings and bookmark drawings. The hyperlink feature is also a great tool. Bluebeam has essentially made it possible (and effective) to use only digital drawings. You could argue that with Bluebeam, you never need to order a set of drawings again. They have made it so easy to navigate a set of drawings using both the hyperlinks and bookmarks.

Bluebeam Revu excels at manipulating PDFs (which conveniently is used by nearly all of the construction industry). Specifically, I utilize these tools to develop visual references when submitting materials for engineering review (submittals) or asking questions of the design team (RFI's). Additionally, exporting CAD files to PDF format allows them to be opened in Bluebeam where all of the CAD layers are imported as well (much easier to manipulate layers in Bluebeam than CAD). My company utilizes a document management software that handles RFI's, submittals, daily reports, and drawing sets which is specifically designed for that use. Bluebeam isn't an effective substitute for our document management software because Bluebeam wasn't designed specifically for that purpose and still needs some work in that area.

It is very good for 2D drawings and details. They could work on adding or updating the 3D viewer to be a little more friendly. It is not bad but not great.

Bluebeam is well suited as a corporate platform. There are many advantages to dashboard creation, hyperlinking in PDF, and using the Studio environment for collaboration. I haven't used Studio myself but other members state that working with an architect or other team members provides a great platform for collaboration.

I think that Bluebeam is best suited to the scenarios where documents need to be reviewed, marked up or edited. The capacity of things that Bluebeam can do in these situations is vast. Bluebeam is not as well suited to quickly or super accurately drawing and creating sketches. It can be used in this capacity but it definitely is not the program's strength.

Estimating -
DEFINITELY WELL SUITED

Contracts or Docs w/ Custom Watermarks or E Signature capability -
DEFINITELY WELL SUITED

Accounting Functions (AP, AR) -
I don't see where Bluebeam would be particularly resourceful more than another program.

It is great for creating RFIs or submittals in the construction management world. Marking up drawings or documents to convey specifically to a general contractor, architect, engineer, or owner is made very simple by the ease-of-use Bluebeam provides as well as the flattening feature so as not to provide too much information.

The program is well suited for use when marking up a document for someone else to edit is needed. It is particularly helpful when the editing process is done by someone remotely. It does not work very well if you have a lot of graphical markups unless you have developed a tool box already. For example, if you are showing a change in a pipe route and only have a mouse for drawing the routing, it is a pain (this issue gets somewhat resolved if you have a stylist).

Bluebeam should be in every superintendent's laptop, and probably tablet. I would like to see it on my Android phone.

Bluebeam is well suited for almost any application from modifying plans to using it to make text in a .pdf editable. It can be less appropriate when trying to use fillable forms that were created using Adobe.

Bluebeam is a great well rounded PDF editing software. It is heavily focused for construction but can be used for anything.

Bluebeam is well suited for take-offs and marking up documents.

Bluebeam struggles with creating drafting and creating drawings.

It is well suited when marking up and comparing documents such as submittals. It's well suited for dual screens when reviewing submittals to specs and or drawings. I can't think of a time where it is less suited in my day to day use of Bluebeam.

As I previously stated, 2 good scenarios are taking a drawing putting a scale on it and getting a fairly close estimate. They offer options such as area, volume, perimeter etc. The other is the ability to very easily color code drawings allowing for visual communication to be a go to.

This program is well suited to construction and engineering applications but could be exceptionally useful for anyone that deals with PDF documents on a regular basis. It is more specialized to PDF documents.

When required to review drawings, one of the best capabilties that Bluebeam offers is the ability to layer images for drawing changes, Change orders and addenda drawings are much simpler when you don't have to manually find changes. There is less room for human error when the program color coats the changes for you.

Collaboration, document editing and control, and drawing manipulation are key tools that I use every day on Bluebeam and have only found on this product exclusively that helps me stay more organized in the construction industry.

As a basic PDF viewer, it is a bit overkill. But being able to convert PDF to word and excel, and take excel and word and make them PDF documents, it is amazing. Also, being able to edit blue prints and mark them up is great. The price point isn't cheap, but if you won't use at least 80% of the features, it might be overkill

I believe that Bluebeam Revu is an extremely powerful tool for reviewing and marking up construction plans; however, it can be too complicated for simple jobs that need to be performed on an iPad when used on site. I feel that the ability to customize it per the project's needs would help make it more efficient. Overall, I do endorse using Bluebeam Revu for its capabilities.

Sharing documents is great with Bluebeam Revu - you can have multiple people in the document marking it up and you see it in real time. This is extremely helpful in my industry. With Bluebeam Revu it is very easy to renumber every page in your document with its sheet number. It is also very easy to find things in the document with text or a visual. I love being able to calibrate and measure things in Bluebeam - it saves so much time.

Bluebeam Revu is perfect for managing construction documents. Tools like Batch Hyperlinking, Batch Slip Sheet and Batch Compare/Overlay are incredibly valuable.

Bluebeam Revu is the only plan reading software I use. I have converted many people from other programs. I have used Bluebeam Revue on a tablet, iPad, and desktop computer. I have seen no flaws with the program besides user error and lack of training. If every project team has a Bluebeam Revu tech friendly team member the program would be perfect. I worry the program will try to be more like AutoCAD. I think the program needs to stop where its at on adding functions and only focus on improving the current functions and arrangement of the program.