Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review Being a Nonprofit organization that produces a lot of publications on various projects, NPS allows us to create, edit and convert documents to suit the needs of our International Donor Partners and other stakeholders. In my own experience using this software, it is used less in our finance department since most of our documents originate from our accounting system and hence there is limited need for PDF management internally.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Ability to combine files SEAMLESSLY and order them around as necessary (so underrated) Signing not only for yourself but for others. Helpful for those who have been granted the authority to sign for VPs and directors Much easier to use than some other PDF viewing services Read full review Cons 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. Read full review The font choices could be better and more robust. Sometimes converting PDF documents to MS Word has formatting problems, like with some tables. Converting MS Word to PDF can be slow sometimes, meaning it is faster to save the MS Word document as a PDF than selecting the file for conversion using the Nitro PDF convert option. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review It's quick and easy to use for all users.
Read full review Performance It works as advertised.
Read full review Support Rating 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
Read full review Nitro checks all the boxes for what we need. It is fairly priced, it allows us to read and edit PDF documents, convert PDF to MS Word and convert MS Word to PDF. It allows us to combine multiple files and do all the post processing like adding page numbers and adding headers and footers
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review Every 1-2 years will do a check on current PDF options to include trialing the software. Have tried Foxit and several that seem to have failed in the marketplace. Over the last 4 years, I have always stuck with Nitro. Unfortunately, we still need to keep Adobe Acrobat (free version) installed to view a small percentage of some PDFs we receive.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review ROI was very quick as the license costs were so low. We purchased 8 licenses versus the initial 2 we were planning on for Adobe. More people were able to use the product than we initially thought due to low purchase costs. We haven't had any further costs to own the product after the initial purchase. We would need to purchase new licenses if we wanted to upgrade. Read full review ScreenShots