How do I undo this mess??????

  • How do I undo this mess??????

    Posted by David Cutler on November 14, 2023 at 11:07 am

    100% operator error here!

    Background – I use a coversheet on my takeoff packages that includes markups for “standard” items that we include in every estimate – mobilization, supervision, layout, dumpsters, etc. I usually insert this sheet into the PDF document when I start a takeoff. This establishes my standard layers and custom columns in the takeoff file.

    Fast forward to a few minutes ago. I have my takeoff pretty well done for a project, but didn’t have the cover sheet added. No big deal, added the cover sheet into the file using Document > Insert Blank Page and select my template.

    Next step is where I think I messed up. My template is an 11×17 document. The rest of the document is 36″ x 24″. No big deal, go to Document > Page Setup and change the page size to “Arch D 24″ x 36”. Hit “okay” and then saved my document.

    Start scrolling through my takeoff and something is wrong. My cover sheet is fine, but the rest of the pages appear to be zoomed in to the upper left quarter of the document – and the rest of the image appears to be cropped off…..

    Of course, since I saved the document Undo isn’t available….

    What I missed is that the “Batch: Crop and Page Setup” is set to “All Pages”….

    So, I’m going to play with the Page Setup options a bit and see if I can get the original images back. If that doesn’t work I’ll export my markups and see if I can import them onto a clean set of the documents – the markups don’t seem to have changed….

    I’ll let you know how this works out…

    David Cutler replied 1 year ago 3 Members · 10 Replies
  • 10 Replies
  • David Cutler

    Member
    November 14, 2023 at 12:10 pm
    Points: 26,616
    Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt UC2 Brainery Advanced Advanced Brown Belt Rank

    Okay, that wasn’t too bad….

    I was able to export my markups from my original file and then import them into a “clean” file that I had available.

    All is well now. 🙂

  • Doug McLean

    Member
    November 14, 2023 at 2:44 pm
    Points: 15,067
    Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Blue Belt UC2 Brainery Advanced Blue Belt Rank

    To err is human,

    To REALLY foul things up, requires a computer.

    Glad you got it all sorted out

    • David Cutler

      Member
      November 14, 2023 at 2:55 pm
      Points: 26,616
      Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt UC2 Brainery Advanced Advanced Brown Belt Rank

      At some point I’ll have to go back an try to replicate what I did – with a sandbox copy of my file – and then see if there is a way to undo it…

  • Isaac Harned

    Member
    November 15, 2023 at 8:32 am
    Points: 8,098
    Rank: UC2 Brainery Purple Belt III UC2 Brainery Purple Belt III

    😬 yeah no way to undo as it literally cuts the rest of the page out. You can see this when you take a single page (testing file) to the crop and page setup and go to a smaller size, press clear. That should replicate what you were seeing. Then after processing you could try to set to original page size and when you press clear this time it should revert to the original position, except the most of the print is gone now. I wish it could keep track of off page content. Glad you had a backup.

    • Isaac Harned

      Member
      November 15, 2023 at 8:35 am
      Points: 8,098
      Rank: UC2 Brainery Purple Belt III UC2 Brainery Purple Belt III

      OK maybe I was wrong. The preview shows that when you try to go back to the original size it would be mostly cut off, but after actually running it, you get your page content back, albeit positioning may need to be worked a bit.

      • David Cutler

        Member
        November 15, 2023 at 8:54 am
        Points: 26,616
        Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt UC2 Brainery Advanced Advanced Brown Belt Rank

        Good to know @isaac-harned ! Thank you for trying this independently.

        At this point our workflow isn’t very “high tech” – basically we manage our PDFs the same way we would handle a paper set of drawings. The “original” gets saved to a “plans” folder in our project directory. A copy gets saved into our “takeoff” folder. This is the file that we make our takeoff markups on. Even if we managed to mess up both of these sets we typically have access to the clients cloud storage site to obtain a clean copy. We also have a set on an cloud based file access system for our trade partners. So 99.9% of the time I have access to a “clean” copy.

        I know that we could be more sophisticated with our system using “Sets” or “Studio Sessions”, but typically one of us completes the entire takeoff for a proposal so setting these type of systems up would be added work.

        At some point I expect that we will transition to digital plans in the field which will require updating our processes – but this may be years in the future…

        • Isaac Harned

          Member
          November 15, 2023 at 10:46 am
          Points: 8,098
          Rank: UC2 Brainery Purple Belt III UC2 Brainery Purple Belt III

          Our process very similar, see snapshot. I wish Sets had the capability of doing this setup automatically, replacing the page and transferring markups to the “Takeoff Set” instead of just going to the latest revision and staying in that folder. We like to keep the overlays in the revision folder as a way to track bidding, another reason to stay away from sets for now.

          • Doug McLean

            Member
            November 16, 2023 at 1:35 pm
            Points: 15,067
            Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Blue Belt UC2 Brainery Advanced Blue Belt Rank

            you can easily create a Set drawing log, that includes the filepath if you need too.

            • Isaac Harned

              Member
              November 16, 2023 at 1:48 pm
              Points: 8,098
              Rank: UC2 Brainery Purple Belt III UC2 Brainery Purple Belt III

              For sure, but I don’t want to also have to open the set file to get the latest and greatest, should all be in one directory so I can easily upload to ACC, PG etc. Also way easier to open multiple prints at once, and I also use the alt+pgup or pgdwn to navigate through a folder. I want to drag and drop my latest and greatest into emails without opening the set, etc. So many little things that are solved by having them in one place. And again I don’t want to create a separate overlay file, I want that on my revision file and I want to replace the background on my Takeoff set, so that the overlay and counts stay with the revision, but my markups also transfer to the new. Lol this discussion has gone a bit off topic.

            • David Cutler

              Member
              November 16, 2023 at 2:24 pm
              Points: 26,616
              Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt UC2 Brainery Advanced Advanced Brown Belt Rank

              SQUIREL!!!!!

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