Bluebeam
Overview
What is Bluebeam?
Recent Reviews
Awards
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Popular Features
View all 21 features- Plan markups & sharing (50)9.595%
- Plan distribution & viewing (48)9.090%
- Document sharing (44)9.090%
- As-built drawings (42)9.090%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
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Pricing
View all pricingRevu Standard
$349
Revu CAD
$449
Revu eXtreme
$599
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting / Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $240 per year per user
Product Demos
Features
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Bluebeam?
Bluebeam develops technology solutions that according to the vendor support project efficiency and collaboration for over two million design and construction professionals worldwide. Bluebeam Revu and Bluebeam Cloud aim to give teams the flexibility to work together anywhere through design, build and handover. And with Bluebeam's desktop and cloud collaboration solutions built on open standards, documents and data can be accessed on any web or iOS device, onsite or off.
Bluebeam Revu®
Revu offers customizable document management, markup and automation tools with a built-in collaboration space, Studio.
• Log in to any desktop with Revu installed and access projects and tool sets
• Mark up and measure together with teammates in real time using Studio
• Share the latest drawings and documents with teams in the field using Bluebeam Cloud
• Increase security and simplify user login with single sign-on (SSO)
Bluebeam Cloud (Web & Mobile)
Connect office and field and complete workflows on the go with Bluebeam Cloud, a suite of web and mobile solutions that connects with documents and tool sets in Revu.
• Work from anywhere via web or iOS device — no set-up or installation required
• Access tool sets and Studio Project files from Revu
• Invite team members to markup and collaborate in real time with the Markup Editor
• Manage punch, RFIs and submittals on the go with Field Tools
Services
Get more out of Revu and Bluebeam Cloud with Bluebeam services designed to help finish the job faster.
• Unlimited centralized cloud storage
• Access to technology partner integrations to support custom workflows
• Access to Bluebeam University training courses at no additional cost
• Technical support via email and phone
• Geolocational insights to help visualize, connect and organize data
Bluebeam Features
Construction Project & Field Management Features
- Supported: Plan distribution & viewing
- Supported: Plan markups & sharing
- Supported: Document sharing
- Supported: Issue tracking & punchlists
- Supported: Photo documentation
- Supported: Jobsite reports
- Supported: RFI tools
- Supported: Collaboration & approvals
- Supported: As-built drawings
- Supported: Mobile app
- Supported: Submittal design and management
- Supported: Checklists
- Supported: Change orders
Estimating Features
- Supported: Takeoff tools
- Supported: Bid creation
Reporting & Analytics Features
- Supported: Dashboards
- Supported: Standard reports
- Supported: Custom reports
- Supported: Data exportability
Additional Features
- Supported: Digital stamps and signatures
Bluebeam Screenshots
Bluebeam Videos
Bluebeam Competitors
Bluebeam Technical Details
Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Windows |
Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Mobile Web |
Supported Countries | USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Australia |
Supported Languages | English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Japanese, Korean |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 61)- Popular Filters
Simple and easy to use Project Management Software
- Project Review In depth
- Document and Data sharing
- Available on Web, iOS onsite and off site.
- Subscription base creates issues for remote users
- Not available on Mac
- Takes too long to print or open files
A Fantastic PDF Markup & Sharing Tool
- PDF markup
- Multiple users of the same file
- Cloud document management
- More advanced drawing tools - the pencil is rather rudimentary
- Easier to pick up for first time users
Better bang for your buck!
- When I have different tabs open, it reverts back to the main or first tab which is helpful when I am moving documents around.
- There are for sure a ton of more options even on the basic version.
- Exporting to folders is super easy and separates the documents in order.
- 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.
Markup Majesty - Bluebeam Rules
- Clear and easy viewing of project plans.
- In depth and extremely detailed mark up tools and sketching tools.
- Excellent help and support services.
- The sketch to scale tools are minimal and could be expanded.
- The group editing and selection is not the easiest to use.
- I think drawing tools could be improved in placing and editing line dimensions.
Bluebeam Revu for project QA&QC is great!
- Ease of use
- Wide range of tools
- Clean and clear results
- Lacks PDF editing tools seen in other vector based softwares.
- Newer version changed a lot from the previous version.
- Can at times be slow.
Bluebeam in a nutshell
- Recent and recall of PDFs that you had open so you can easily flip back in forth between files all within the same window.
- Instant access to a list of tools and setting of the defaults.
- At times it is difficult to find out where a certain function is.
- Some secure files won't open in Bluebeam and must be used in Adobe.
- The comparisons feature has difficulties with scanned documents.
All the bang for the buck
- Ease of use.
- Speed. It allows the user to access and edit documents much faster.
- At first it might be intimidating if you have never used it.
- Sometimes too many options.
Great for scaled markups
- Great fast PDF viewer with better editing tools than Adobe Acrobat.
- Useful feature set for architects, such as setting drawing scale, distance and area measurement tools.
- I wish the drawing tools had 'snapping' options.
- There should be more control over dimming backgrounds and flattening/unflattening markups so you can be sure your recipient is seeing the same thing.
Great for architects and designers
- Marking up drawings to communicate quick revisions.
- Moving around, adding or deleting sheets.
- Could have even more editing things, more shapes, symbols, etc.
A must-have PDF software!
- Bluebeam Studio is number one for PDF sharing.
- Cropping pages and inserting PDF files is really easy.
- Making PDF sharing more faster than it is right now.
- Opening multiple PDF files and viewing them is a little difficult.
reduce risk by automating your QA\QC process
- It makes estimating take-offs a breeze by allowing for the simple creation of groups and automating counting and take off.
- Revu is the best tool in the AEC space for marking up plan sets. It is the tool that simulates pen and paper the best.
- Bluebeam needs to integrate with more systems. The few they have are great, but they need to expand.
- Revu is lacking in PDF forms. They often do not support newer forms of technology for multiple release cycles.
Revu can handle all PDF related tasks with ease.
- General PDF viewing: it seems to have the best PDF engine for speed and accuracy.
- Redlining PDFs: it's simple to use and can create custom stamps easily.
- REVU for ipad is not as easy to use as the desktop application.
- The recent change of the user interface when going to the 2018 version was somewhat confusing. We have users on both older and newer versions.
Making Markups Easy
- Marking up PDFs with preloaded stamps.
- Easy to use line/rectangle tools.
- Can't select pixels by color.
- Hard to find bookmark tool.
Great for the price
- Customizing tools and interface.
- Measuring and markups.
- High price tag.
- Updates should be easier.
Bluebeam Gets It Done
- Easy surface-level use but can become a deep and powerful tool if you invest in learning all its features.
- Perfect for editing PDFs, stamping, markups and creating templates.
- Well equipped for simple or complex take-off methods.
- Lots of customization for layout and tool ribbons.
- I would like to see better Excel integration and exporting.
- Id like to see a web app and cloud version to use on Chrome and also a Chrome preview extension
- It would be nice to see integration into Microsoft Office
Bluebeam - One stop for PDF collaboration
- It is relatively easy to use - without formal instruction.
- It easily allows you to grab PDF documents and edit them.
- It allows you create canned tools, like stamps, so data editing can be standard.
- Although it is relatively easy to use, the editing tools do not exist in drop down menus. I wish the interface were more similar to other Windows programs.
Bluebeam, how construction uses PDFs
- Scaling drawings to get accurate measurements from drawings.
- Cloud sharing via Bluebeam Studio.
- The markup tools.
- Bookmarking pages to make pages easier to find.
- Creating hyperlinks within a document.
- Comparing document changers with their compare tool.
- I would like to see Bluebeam Studio be able to see document change dates for files that are not PDFs.
- Every now and then the program gets a little glitchy.
Powerful tool for A-E-C industry
- Markups
- Takeoffs
- Drawing comparisons
- Rendering speed is a bit slow at times
- View and scrolling preferences (e.g. full page vs. scrolling view vs. zoom w/ scroll wheel) could be executed better
- Multi-document or side by side viewing
- Cost
Bluebeam leaves Adobe in the dust!
- Adding text
- Marking up a document
- Doing take-offs for estimating purposes
- It launches slowly (which is why I personally don't have it as my default launcher for PDFs that I view only).
Bluebeam rocks
- Dimensioning scaled PDF documents is one of the things I use the most. I can get an accurate measurement where one has not been provided
- Editing PDF documents- there are documents that are automatically created through systems software that may need to be edited to me to the specific needs of a particular project. With Bluebeam, you could do this with ease.
- Document control is a major strength of Bluebeam. I have used Bluebeam on a project that had over 18,000 drawings. We also used the link feature to hyperlink each page that had a fallout.
- The iPad is where Bluebeam has the most room to improve upon. I have used Bluebeam to record punch list as it is easy to create punch items but is not as simple to update the punch list status.
- Creating reports is also not a strength of Bluebeam. You cannot create a report to tell you what items are linked to each other.
- Storage, editing, and navigation are strengths of Bluebeam. But tracking document status is not a strength of Bluebeam.
- Draw on PDFs. No other software I've ever used is better at this, and I've used Photoshop, Illustrator, and Adobe Acrobat. Revu molds together the best features in CAD (powerful drawing capabilities, point snap abilities, extreme accuracy) with a great PDF viewer. Very much worth it.
- Mark up / annotate PDFs. Typing on Revu is very easy via the text box tool or the typewriter tool. You can choose from a variety of fonts, opaque or transparent backgrounds, any color--the possibilities are endless.
- Combining and rearranging PDFs. You can easily move pages around, combine separate files, and flatten files.
- A feature I would add -- a command line. The shortcuts are good, and in the latest version of Revu you can create your own which makes things easier. But I have used CAD and I find the command line much faster than dropdown menus.
- Something that could be better -- PDF compression. Revu files, when marked-up, can be massive, and there's not a clear enough way to shrink the file down by reducing clarity, etc. I understand this is a vector program--not rasterized--and vectors can be far more complex, especially with patterns and such. But compression would be nice.
- Features I'd like--enhanced vector abilities. Feathering lines, precise arc drawing, etc. Similar to Illustrator.
Bluebeam: Best PDF Document Management tool.
- Drawing markup. There are multiple ways to markup files from revision clouds, hyperlink tools, various shapes, and lines. All of these markups can also be counted and sorted for estimating takeoff style markups.
- Compiling and organizing. Bluebeam Revu also is a PDF authoring tool. You can create and export PDFs from anywhere there is a 'print' feature, or even convert filetypes directly to PDF. Multiple different PDFs can easily be combined, split apart, or rearranged.
- File distribution. The Studio Project and Studio Session feature allow for teams to have a cloud storage resource to share files with various permission and viewing abilities.
- It really is a great product and there really isn't a con that I can think of. Sometimes very large files struggle to refresh on a screen, but that is to be expected.
- The drawing editing tools are more advanced than those of similar products.
- Batch tools make processes like plotting, file rotation, or reduction of file size save countless hours.
- Being able to calibrate PDFs to a scale allows me to quickly show missing dimensions in the field without opening a model editing it printing it and sending out the file.
- Sometimes when I'm plotting multiple files to PDF, Bluebeam will start rotating them 90 degrees during the plot process. Not sure why.
- As you select text to highlight for some reason it will sometimes automatically select all the text in the drawing which will have to be undone if that was not your intention.
TIME SAVER!
- Easy to use. No need to convert files. You can work on a PDF file directly.
- You can directly export the quantity to MS Excel.
- You can write comments in the drawings.
- I want a Keyboard shortcut to reuse the previous command as I use the same few commands repeatedly. I didn't find any shortcuts online. In AutoCAD, by pressing enter or space bar you are allowed to use the previous command.
Bluebeam Review
- It is excellent for compiling, organizing, reviewing, and marking up documents.
- For large documents, the bookmarking tab, hyperlinks, and highlights make it easy to quickly navigate large documents.
- There are many different functions such as takeoff, document creation, markups, etc.
- It is easy to share .pdf files with others.
- It is cheaper than alternative takeoff software.
- Software updates can cause a learning curve adjustment for navigating through the tools which can get overwhelming.
- For extremely large files, the program has sometimes glitched, been slow to load the images and files have been corrupt.
- There are many tools and options, but through use and practice, the program is easy to understand.