General Questions
This is a great place to ask those general questions that don’t fit in other specific groups.
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What’s your most niche custom tool build?
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What’s your most niche custom tool build?
Spent parts of last week building tool chests for a couple of customers’ niche scopes, and it reminded me that Bluebeam’s default libraries are built for the most common trades, not every trade.
If what you do is mainstream markups or general architectural work, you’re mostly covered out of the box. But get into something more specialized (structural connections, site utilities, whatever your corner of the industry is), and you’ll hit gaps fast. No symbol sitting there ready to drop in. You end up drawing your own from scratch.
That’s not a knock on Bluebeam. No default library could realistically cover the actual vocabulary of every trade. Not even the 1615 tools in my free download scratch the surface of what’s needed. If you’ve been in a specialized trade a while, I’d guess you’ve built at least one custom symbol nobody else has ever seen.
What’s the most niche thing you’ve ever had to build into your tool chest because it just didn’t exist anywhere? Learn alongside the rest of us; I want to see what’s out there that never made it into a public library. (I’m not asking you to share your tools, just your story)
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9 Replies
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Points: 16,781Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Blue Belt I
Not really niche tools @troy-degroot but, I do have 5 different profile for measuring groundworks alone. Not only to limit the number of tools in the tool chests but mainly in order so I can collect as much info in the custom columns as possible – automatically wherever possible.
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Points: 30,152Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt II
I think custom columns might be the most fun part of Bluebeam. It’s like a puzzle when everything falls into place.
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Points: 34,232Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt IIII
@Vince hit the nail on the head with this on @troy-degroot – it’s not that the tool is special, it is the data that you collect with the tool that make’s it “niche”.
When I started here we had a tool for “8” DIP Cl52″ and it measured the length. The current tool is “6070 Water Main – 8″ D.I.P. CL52”. While it still provides the length it also provides an item number, an item description, a “Phase” value, and, if needed, an “Alternate” value. Revu allows me to export all of this data into Excel. Using some data washing techniques using Power Query (thank you @doug) I develop a file that I’m then able to upload into our estimating software without having to look up items numbers, select items, type in quantities and assign Phases manually. That is the power of the custom tools!
Hope that this helps.😎
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Points: 30,152Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt II
Love it, just requires a little creativity to end up with additional value.
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Points: 3,453Rank: UC2 Brainery Orange Belt I
That is a very interesting topic. Sadly (or fortunately) I don’t belong to a niche. In the Contract Administration side of things I’m involved with many aspects of the buildings.
I thought about creating different profiles, but then I can’t really leverage on tool-chest shortcuts because those are universal across the profiles and I can’t create unique shortcuts per profile (that’s not totally true, I could load the “My Tools” with different configurations, which will hinder some efficiency.
Still, I love reading how different people use those functions.
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Points: 30,152Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt II
Are you referring to the number shortcut assigned in My Tools? You can now click on the properties gear on each toolset and enable number shortcuts. Not sure if that helps or not. One thing that has made a huge difference for me is that we can rearrange the order of the columns in the Tool Chest now. Label is easier to see when you put it first, and Subject second. I turn all the others off, which you couldn’t do before.
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Points: 30,152Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt II
I could probably flood this thread with examples and never run out, but I want to hear what everyone else has built too.
Just in the last month, I’ve built custom Bluebeam Revu profiles for a high-end cabinetry shop in Montana, a commercial framing contractor in California, and an industrial piping contractor in Dallas. I’m about to start one for a concrete and asphalt contractor in Reno.
At this point, I’ve built custom Tool Sets for just about every CSI Division, but a couple from the last year really stuck with me.
One was a commercial cleaning company doing their bids off historical labor data. Different floor types need different cleaning methods and different labor time, and toilets, sinks, and windows all take a pretty predictable number of minutes to clean. It’s no different than any other trade running a takeoff, once you know your unit rates, Bluebeam does the rest.
The other was an equipment rental company that supplies heaters, AC units, humidifiers, and all the accessories that go into keeping a construction site comfortable. We built each piece of equipment to scale so their team could place them directly on the plan and run temporary electric, ducting, and gas lines to them. Every spec for the equipment lived in a custom markup list, tied directly to the estimate forms. My team even wrote JavaScript so when someone entered the job location and dates, the form pulled the average temperature for that window and predicted propane costs automatically.
I could keep going, but these are a few of my favorites. What’s the most unusual Bluebeam profile or Tool Set you’ve built?
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Points: 16,781Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Blue Belt I
The JavaScript for the rental company sounds impressive @troy-degroot !
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Points: 30,152Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt II
Full credit to @isaac-harned on that part. I know when to bring in the right people!
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