[David Cutler]

This post by @troy-degroot might give you the answer that you’re looking for @Nic_Bitting

https://uchapter2.com/managing-custom-columns/

I also have had this issue from time to time. I posted a similar question at one point:

https://uchapter2.com/brainery/general-questions/forum/topic/conflicting-custom-columns/

Hope this helps!

[Nic Bitting]

Thanks @David Cutler I’ll dig into those resources.

[Don Walke]

Join the club. I may be off base, but my understanding is that “save to profile” in this instance saves the columns to that particular PDF. Try going to profile/save profile, them profile/manage profiles and export the profile o a directory for safe keeping. I’ve had profiles get corrupted and had to delete them and import a copy.

[Doug McLean]

Chances are, someone else has opened it previously and their custom columns are already with the PDF.

To save yourself some effort, you can set up a quick macro to import your custom columns. (If you have Extreme/ Complete)

[Don Walke]

That sounds great. Got any clues on how to set up a macro? Last time I did anything like that was using Lotus 123.

[Doug McLean]

Firstly, you have to have Extreme/ Complete

Then you need to have this document https://support.bluebeam.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Bluebeam-Script-Reference-2018.pdf

Now go to the Help menu for Using Scripts in Revu… it will walk you through everything you’ll need to know (there’s even a link the Script Reference I posted above)

Good luck

[Don Walke]

Thanks, will give it a go.

[Nic Bitting]

Great feedback @Doug McLean . I’ve done macros for Excel before, and this will definitely be a handy one to set-up for Bluebeam. My workflow will hinge on these custom columns.

This seems like a odd blind spot for Bluebeam – surely it can’t be that hard to have a pop-up when opening a new PDF that asks if you want to:
1) Use your own custom columns
2) Use the existing columns within the document
3) Use the Bluebeam default columns

On that note, how do you power users go about providing feedback to Bluebeam? Have you ever made feature suggestions that you’ve seen incorporated into the program? I had some success previously lobbying Planswift for a few updated features, wondering what the feedback loop is like for Bluebeam?

[Doug McLean]

its pretty easy to send feedback… Help> Make a Suggestion, it will do the rest.

Several of us have made suggestions, on various things. One of the few I’ve suggested actually came to fruition, which was the ability to set scales to multiple pages at the same time. We’ve only been able to do this since Revu19.

You’ll find macro’s in Revu MUCH easier to do than than Excel. You don’t need to learn VBA for one. They’re much simpler.

I wholeheartedly agree that something as simple as your custom columns could be a quick popup box, but setting up a quick macro and making it part of your workflow is actually quite simple. Bluebeam likes to say that they support Estimators, but honestly, they focus more of their support towards field ops and collaboration with Architects, Engineers and GC’s IMO.

[Troy DeGroot]

I’ll add my 2-cents to the conversation, which matches what several others are saying. Custom columns live in the document. You definitely want to save them to the profile, but that only applies the columns to newly opened PDFs. Anything previously opened in a different profile will have those custom columns. As you can imagine, as more of your users open with the correct profile every time, the problem will fix itself. With that said, creating a quick javascript button is so easy even I did it. The hardest part is designing the image for the button.

As for making suggestions to Bluebeam, they are definitely focused on improving the Cloud workflow tools which are not estimators top of mind. Back in the day, I had several suggestions implemented, but that was when things were much smaller and I had a reseller badge for influence. 🤣