This is one I watch trip up sharp people constantly: two markups that look completely identical on the page land as two separate line items in a legend. Same tool, same measurement, same everything you can see at a glance.

Nine times out of ten it comes down to something the legend checks that you can’t, color, subject text, or a label field…

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I use Microsoft To Do – with working for lots of different people there are so many tasks to remember but To Do works really well.

Great idea to set the monthly reminder @Vince 😎

That’s a great practice, and having a reminder would help as the weeks quickly fly by. Especially for someone like you with so many profiles and advanced setups.

I have a monthly reminder to do a complete backup of Bluebeam – not had to use it yet but don’t want to risk somehow losing all of thse profiles.

Every few months I hear from a student who lost real time: a customized toolbar, a Tool Chest, a batch of hyperlinks they carefully built out, all gone because a profile got overwritten or a project file got rebuilt from scratch.

It’s almost never a software problem. It’s that nobody built a habit of backing up the pieces that took the longest…

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There’s a link to the submission page in the upper right hand corner of the page.

I wasn’t aware there was an application already. Thanks for letting us know. I agree you have to learn the basics before you get overwhelmed with the possibilities. I’ll have to find the link and start brainstorming a course or two.

Learn the basics then experiment. You may have a specific output that you are initially trying to generate but, if you do those two things first, then you might discover that you can produce a whole load of extra data that will help you, all with very little or no extra input.

Who has already looked at the submission guidelines for Unbound 2027?

I did and something is bothering me about them.
Everything is focusing on the end result. Nothing is focusing on the beginning.

Everything they’re looking for is about data, standards, integrations… but its all about the end result.

The NUMBER ONE thing you can do to improve…

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One of the most common questions I get from newer Bluebeam users: why do my markup settings keep following me from one profile to the next when I don’t want them to?

Here’s what’s going on: Bluebeam’s markup defaults live at the program level, not the profile level. So when you use “Set as Default” on a font size or color, it applies…

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Here’s something I end up telling people when they ask about marking up drawings on an
iPad in the field:

Flatten the layers you don’t need before you walk out the door. The file loads faster, your
session syncs cleaner, and you’re not hunting through markup layers that have nothing to
do with what you’re looking at on-site.

Seems obvious…

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What I know of your system Doug, the integration is so fine-tuned, they couldn’t function unless they completely committed to the workflow.

Sometimes it just takes one time-saving feature to blow their mind and convert them. The trouble is figuring out which one will trigger them. When I was a BIM Manager transitioning 70 employees across 7 offices to 3D design, I would print 3D images from my models, and purposely leave them on the printer to hear people talk about them and…

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All three members of my team use the same toolchest.
They’re designed around our Estimating software so its pretty critical that everyone is using the customized tool chests.

At this point 2 of the 3 of us on our estimating team are using the custom tools that I have built. This is working well for the 2 of us that are using them. Still trying to get our head estimator to use them… 😎

Here’s a pattern I keep running into when I talk to companies about their Bluebeam setup:

Someone on the team put real time into building a custom Tool Chest. It’s solid, for them. Organized around how they work.

And then nobody else uses it.

Not because it’s bad. But because it was built around one person’s workflow, not around how the whole…

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I’ll keep you posted @troy-degroot !

I’ve attached a quick preview of what we have created in Sketchup. Goal is to take this into a 3D PDF to share with our extended team and our customer.

I don’t have any experience with SketchUp, but I would love to see what you come up with.

Has anyone generated an IFC file using Trimble Sketchup that you have been able to use to create a 3D PDF? We’ve been modeling a foundation excavation in Sketchup Free, but would need the “Pro” subscription to have the export capability.

Great to have you in the Brainery @maxskewes

If you haven’t already looked, there might be more tools in my free download that you can apply.

Bluebeam Tool Sets

Another option to learn how to build powerful tools is in my Takeoff and Estimating classes. In 201, you will learn to build the tools,…

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Welcome to the Brainery @maxskewes

I’m not familiar with the window toolset (I work on the Civil side of the business), but you might consider making a few tools of your own that give you exactly what you need for your workflow.

The process is really quite simple:

1. Place a count measurement

2. Update your Subject and Label on the Properties…

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The Windows Tool Set provided only shows windows for elevations. Is there a tool set labeled as something else that has windows for floor plans?

Hi @DavidCutler – yes – at the 2:00 mark I’m using the magic wand to change the new perimeter markup into the kerbs from my Tool Chest.

Your videos are a great introduction to the functionality @Vince !

For those who haven’t seen them yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA8AkXr3rUQ

One question Vince – In the Part 2 video at about the 2:00 mark does the “Ctrl” key launch the “magic wand” functionality? What you are doing here – reusing…

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Not sure how it’ll work eventually, but in the beta, you could only access your custom tools with Convert to via a keyboard shortcut.

All in all MAX is pretty cool if you do a lot of the things that they show you it can do. I think they will probably get a lot of Revit users signed up as well because of the new integrations there.

It will change all of the information to that of the new tool @DavidCutler .

Therefore, you have to be careful of one thing – if you have already entered any information into custom columns then this will be lost.

This is a small price to pay for everything else being changed in one go though.

I’ll try to do some demos of how I’m using this feature soon.

Very cool @Vince !

Something I’m curious to see is how the “magic wand” works with custom columns and such. Hopefully it is more powerful than the current format painter…

@DavidCutler I have tried out a couple of other things as well using Claude – some work but some don’t.

One interesting one, I asked Claude to look at a set of duplicated markets in a 60 page (well that is what I think it was) document. Then, after pointing to the open file, I used a line of code as follows: –

“With the “Area Measurement”…

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Maybe @troy-degroot that will be a future upgrade. Could work similarly to the way you can assign your custom markup tool with dynamic fill.

Until then I think @Vince has the “working” solution with the “magic wand”. Still potentially a 2 or 3 click process, but if you are saving dozens of clicks on a markup by re-using the geometry you…

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Thanks for sharing David. It seems to me that when he offset, it was just a markup, but I believe you could still convert it to your custom tool after. For now anyway. Exciting times.

its pretty cool.

Watching Luke do the Offset as function opened my eyes a little.

I tried it out and showed my team, and we all were a little blown away

Thank you for the feedback @Vince ! Looking forward to seeing how this impacts our workflows. 😎

Hi David,

Yes, it does appear to be rather good.

I’m using it to offset oversite areas for pile mats – mark up the oversites but if they are closer than say 3m use a ‘thin’ area to join them together. Then simple ask Bluebeam to offset by whatever distance you want and create a new markup. The can then be changed to the piling mat tool with…

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Made a few minutes to watch last week’s Morning Coffee Review recording.

Bluebeam’s Luke Prescott was @mechave ‘s guest. At about the 49:00 mark Luke demonstrated the “Offset as a” feature. This looks as if it has amazing potential as a time saver.

Now I’m…

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Maybe I’ll update while on vacation next week. I always hate to update in a busy training season (which seems to be more continuous these days)

I’ve had some issues with the Word Plugin.

Other than that though, nothing outrageous.

I’ve not come across any issues with 21.9 @DavidCutler but, as Doug has also said, I’m using the Max beta.

I would guess they are scanning the line you said, but there is a setting when they print to select Vector or Raster. I hope it’s that simple and fixed going forward.

We have a local Civil Site Design firm that consistently distributes what appear to be scanned PDFs. Part of this may be that they are applying a wet seal and signature, but even their unsealed documents appear to be scanned – or at least are what I believe is called a “raster” print rather than a “vector” print.

Basically this renders many of…

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So I had my <s style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Guinea Pig</s> Intern install 21.9 on his laptop (backup machine) and the line weight of the ghost line issue appears to have been resolved, but he has noticed what appears to be another bug. For some reason his curser seems to jump out of the search window on the tool chest…

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I should probably update, but per typical, I wait a little while. I’m guessing I’ll be jumping straight to Max.

I have had none of those issues, but I’m on the MAX Beta.
Not seeing them from other member of my team either.

Good morning. I’m working in Revu 21.6 at this point and have been hesitant to move off that version due to some of the issues I’ve seen posted about 21.7 and 21.8. So, the question remains if those issues have been addressed in Revu 21.9?

The main one I’m hung up on is the “thick” working line when applying markups. In 21.6 the “ghost…

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Welcome to the Brainery, Courtney.

Welcome to the group @Courtney Ward Thanks for posting.

If you open the Forms panel, you will see that each “field” has a name. Use copy/paste so that all the fields you want to match have the same name. That’s it, super simple.

Hello everyone,

I have a PDF document that I converted into a fillable form in Bluebeam Revu, and I’m trying to set it up so that certain text fields will automatically populate based on the value entered into another field.

For example, when I type the project number the first time, I’d like that same number to automatically fill in all other…

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