Item: Bluebeam
Rating: 9
Author: Trevor Smith

Overall Satisfaction with Bluebeam Revu

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Bluebeam as an alternative to an Adobe product. Our joint venture company was using it and had noted the simplicity of marking up documents. We bought the program and most people use it as their default program to modify/edit documents. In addition to modifying documents, it allows you to almost create a document with all of the tools at its disposal.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Adding text
Marking up a document
Doing take-offs for estimating purposes

Cons

It launches slowly (which is why I personally don't have it as my default launcher for PDFs that I view only).

Return on Investment

From my perspective, it allows me to use less subcontractor/vendor input as I can quantity items myself.
Allows clearer distribution of thoughts and ideas with the mark-up abilities.
Allows for others to continue on a mark-up concept.

Alternatives Considered

This is by FAR the most powerful product that I have used. I have not turned back to Adobe for modifying documents since we purchased Bluebeam. I am not sure of the cost of the program, but sure it is worth it to the company. As to doing take-offs, this is a great tool as well compared to some of the others.

Other Software Used

Zoom, Dropbox Business, Skype for Business (formerly Lync)

Likelihood to Recommend

Best suited for generating quantities and doing take-offs. I use it regularly to quantify items on a drawing that I couldn't do with an Adobe program. I love the feature of saving the info so that you know if it was an area, perimeter, or simply a quantity take-off performed. A negative is that it takes a bit longer to load a PDF. This is the reason I have to default to Adobe, but manually open Bluebeam when I want to edit a file.

Bluebeam Feature Ratings

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Bluebeam leaves Adobe in the dust!