CAD User Online Article Archive

Review

Blasted paper?

From CAD User AEC Magazine Vol 23 No 05 - MAY/JUNE 2010

Bluebeam has joined the ranks of companies claiming to have abolished paper, says David Chadwick. But are the claims justified?

Look, I've been following the progress of the paperless office for many years now, and heard numerous companies herald the end of hard copy documents. We have followed the latest trends in wide format printing pretty closely here in CAD User. We’ve looked at the move towards distribute and print, and seen cheaper and easier to use printers moving within the financial reach of more end users - so another invective against paper really needs to be quite convincing to get me at all excited!

This time it’s Bluebeam who have paper in their sites. Admittedly, I am a big fan of Bluebeam's Revu software, using it regularly on my laptop. Nevertheless I still get bogged down in paperwork, and so was keen to discover exactly what turns the latest version - PDF Revu 8 - into a “Paper-Blasting PDF technology”. At its heart, Bluebeam is a PDF Mark-Up, editing and management application with particular relevance to the CAD and Construction industries. It boasts plenty of other useful features too, as I found out last year, but here we are going to concentrate on the aspects of the software that make digital project communication and collaboration essential - by making paper irrelevant

ACCESS IS THE KEY

The format of this latest version of PDF Revu is even more appealing than the old one, retaining the cool battleship grey theme but with an even simpler and more intuitive layout. There’s also a nifty new tab to the left of the main screen that enables users to manage their documents - not only PDFs within the system, but any document, off or online. It also integrates with Microsoft's SharePoint and Bentley's ProjectWise, so you don't have to search outside of Bluebeam to find, utilise and collaborate on documents held within those Project Management Systems.

I particularly like the browser facility that brings up the first page of each PDF in a small adjacent window when the cursor hovers over the filename - see before you upload! Other file formats, naturally, can be viewed, but not before they are converted into PDF format - JPEGs almost immediately, but Word, Excel, CAD and other formats after a couple of conventions have been satisfied, with the document saved hereafter as a PDF file. The File Access tab can be used for opening, previewing, or pinning PDF files. It helps you organise them by automatically retaining a list of those used recently, to which you can add those you have pinned to keep handy, and others categorised for convenience, and you can collapse and expand your lists or sort by date, filename etc, to make them easier to navigate.

Besides providing a powerful document browser, the Access tab also allows CAD drawings to be displayed, and layer by layer. You can also keep track of PDF edits using the Mark-Up list which tracks and manages all Mark-Ups, action Mark-Ups (and their links to additional content) and sequenced Mark-Ups (that auto-increment by number, Roman numeral or letter every time they are placed).

If you then combine Bluebeam's comprehensive access capabilities with its PDF creation tools, it allow users to instantly create PDFs from single or multiple files, in many different formats, or single PDFs from multiple PDFs, or from scanned in data, then you have sorted out both ends of the chain. You can also combine PDF documents into a single PDF package, instead of combining pages from different PDFs into one PDF. Bluebeam shows the package in a special preview, allowing you to extract the files you need.

MARK-UP and MEASURE

The considerable list of Mark-Up tools still retains its formidable challenge to the viewer - how many different tools can you use in a single document? And that's not just a facile comment. Each Mark-Up tool serves a distinct purpose, and whilst the average user may not know why one particular type is used instead of another, a convention will be established between collaborators where they will have a rather superior Mark-Up vocabulary to those who are still wedded to paper based Mark-Ups with a red felt tip pen.

The same exactitude can be established with the Measuring Tool. I can confirm how valuable that feature is by having opened up a PDF containing an image and doing a 400% zoom to very precisely measure the length of a Gnome's nose (don't ask!). You can’t zoom in on a paper drawing, and would need a microscope and micrometer to achieve the same accuracy. Other new features include a plug in to Revit for one-button PDFs, custom Revu toolbars, and custom columns in Revu's Mark-Ups list for formulas, in addition to the Mark-Up improvements listed above.

DIGITAL VERSUS PAPER

These are just a few of the reasons why digital document reviews are superior to paper-based reviews. Going back to Bluebeam's reasons for attempting to “blast” paper documents aside is really just the icing on the cake - a further embellishment of the argument. Access is about enabling anyone, anywhere, on the team to view a document and review it, mark it up, make suggestions and so on, without being on the distribution list for printed copies and without waiting for the UPS van to roll up to the site office. Not to mention saving money on expensive printing consumables, which in turn is more environment-friendly too.

It also means that the architect is not working on the latest version of his plans, with the site manager clutching plans that were superseded two weeks ago. Nor is he waiting for drawings to be returned, complete with Mark-Ups done in a leaking Portakabin and covered in coffee rings, before he can incorporate the critical information into his own drawings. Well, come on! This is like fishing in a barrel! I could go on and on about this, especially now that we have so many different ways we can communicate with each other - laptops, panel computers, all the way down to Blackberries and the like. It's inconceivable now that anyone could rustle up an argument that points the other way.

Printers are great for onsite, or single location, collaboration with colleagues, and their presentation capabilities are now quite amazing - but extend the team one wireless stop away, and you need the freedom and access that digital collaboration, and specifically Bluebeam PDF Revu 8, can give you.

The PDF format is darn near ubiquitous, with freely available readers. Bluebeam, though not quite as ubiquitous, uses the same format, is lots more fun to use, and has additional features that could fill up an article much longer than this one. www.bluebeam.com

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