Yeah we tried the shutdown to avail.
Thanks for the input.

Very curious.
Has it since resolved for you Troy?

Howdy, anyone else having issues with the recent update to 21.3.0.4126 not showing information in the Legend?

I have a series of preset tools, and I used the Label column to describe the takeoff, but even with information filled into the Label column in the Markups List the Legend refuses to show the information that I’ve typed in. (see…

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Will be thinking of you both Doug and Tammy and lifting you up over the coming weeks.

Good thought Vince. Indeed the label has moved away. I just tested your hypothesis, and I can move the label, but I can’t get it any closer to the highlighted markup, it only moves further away to either side of the line.

Seems like an odd glitch. When you offset a line left or right the label gets offset as well – to a disproportionate degree.

Hey @Doug McLean , it could be a Revu 21 thing. I haven’t played with our custom line styles until, so not sure how this would have played out in Revu 20.

I’ll try to explain this another way. With the Standard Solid line style, when you pick two points to draw the line, the highlighted portion shows up equally centered on either side of the…

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Hello all, following up on this thread, I’ve been updating our line styles to allow for center aligned, left aligned and right aligned Polylines.

One hiccup I’ve run into is that with a center aligned Polyline when the Show Label option is checked the Label sits neatly next to the Takeoff (pic. 1 below). However with a left or right…

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Noted, I figured that’s the case, but just wanted to double check. Thanks @Doug McLean

Probably an easy answer here, but I haven’t been able to figure out why sometimes when I open a PDF the sheets are all labelled with the prefix [1] prior to the Sheet # (see attached screenshot). Does anyone know why this happens?

Currently I just relabel per the Sheet #, but if there’s an easy way to prevent that prefix from showing up then…

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Hi Carl, when I paste in that formula you found I had to manually replace the quotes to get it working – once working it yields some strange results. For example 2.9 decimal feet results in 2 ft 10 3/16 in. That’s tough to follow in an Excel workbook full of dimensions.

I edited the formula to yield a more legible and commonly…

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Seems like a big oversight, but unfortunately Excel does not have this as an option for formatting.

Does anyone know if there’s a way to disable the Autofocus feature of the Markup List?

For example, once I’ve completed Markup #1 sheet A200 and moved on to the next page I might find that the same component shows up sheet A300. I’d like to click on Markup #1 and quickly resume the Takeoff, but currently every time I click on a completed markup…

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Will be curious to hear responses, I’d love to accomplish the same with several of my tools.

Thanks @Vince and @doug, I’ve not worked with custom line styles yet. Could you point me toward any tutorials I could review on the process?

Oh interesting. Thanks for pointing out that anomaly @liz, I wonder if that’s part of what I’m running into? either way sounds like there’s a few quick solutions to the issue. Thanks all.

One feature that I enjoyed about Planswift is that when building custom tools for a linear takeoff you could select whether the line would be centered, or aligned left, or aligned right between the two end points you’ve selected.

I’ve been pecking around but haven’t found a way to replicate this in Bluebeam. Maybe I could upload custom line…

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Thanks David, sounds similar to the approach Doug is suggesting. I’ll try that.

The dimension lines are deceiving here as they were drawn by the Architect, and you’re just seeing my colored markup on top.

That said, if you do draw in dimension lines I’ve learned that if you click on the line, hover over the center control point and hold Shift…

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Easy enough, will try that.

One blip I keep running into that I haven’t figured out…after drawing a Polylength or Area takeoff I often need to add a radius at corners. About once a day randomly when I right click into the menu “Convert to Arc” will be greyed out.

Sometimes I’ve had success by selecting a control point adjacent to the line segment I want to be radius,…

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Wow Doug, I’ve estimated some massive residential millwork projects in the past ($20-$40M), but this LDS project sounds like a beast! 300 Cased openings – sheesh!

Having a solid system in place is key to working at that scale. Glad you’ve got the Bluebeam chops to make it happen. Rad.

Thanks for all the feedback so far, I truly appreciate the help I’m finding here. I’m going to keep this thread open by asking a few more follow up questions I’ve run into over the past couple weeks.

• When I create a custom column, (for example a specific Part Number) can I then assign that text to show up as a Caption on my takeoff? Right now…

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Thanks for the question @ChrisRiley and the response @dhwalkellc

I’ve been trying to sort out the same thing and it looks like this will be a slick solution. Cheers!

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…

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

I’ve begun building out Custom Columns for my team, super useful tool but I’m having some hiccups.

One thing I don’t understand is why I have to Import the Custom Columns so often. My custom columns are often not showing up on new PDFs, so my current workflow involves importing my custom columns and reordering the columns to the appropriate spot.

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Thanks! That makes good sense.

Thanks for the feedback Doug! A few thoughts in Bold below

#1 yes. Click on the end node to select the tool, Rt. Click (right click is your very best friend btw) and then click Resume.
That works great, thanks!

#2 Try applying your custom columns first. If that doesn’t work, check your tools to see if they have built in layers
Will try.

#3 You can…

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So I’m 1.5 weeks into Bluebeam and progress has been steady. For every question that comes up I’ve tried to troubleshoot first by exploring around the program, then googling for an answer, usually I end up on a YouTube clip that doesn’t quite answer what I’m looking for. I’m so grateful this community is here for the more in-depth questions!

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Yes @lizlarsen that presentation was chock full of goodies, especially for a newbie like me. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with the community.

Awesome to hear that you’ll be presenting on this topic in the summer @Doug McLean . It’s good to know as this’ll give me some time to review the resources you mentioned and envision how this technique can best be applied to our workflows. Hopefully I’ll be up to speed by June!

Thanks for sharing.

OK, since last week I’ve updated my Toolset, using Subject as the specific tool name and Label as the general category. This give a much better user experience and seems to be working well for our team. (See Picture 1) Thanks for the suggestion Troy.

Now my Markup list populates in a logical fashion, so I can see everything grouped by Takeoff,…

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But @Doug McLean , that would mean the designers have to work in close collaboration with the contractor and their subs through the design process, which would lead to more intelligent and realistic planning, saving lots of time and money!

It’s almost as if clients should be requesting a project delivery method like this 🤔

Tongue firmly in…

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Hi John,

Perhaps you’ve already found a resolution to this issue, but if not maybe this tip will help: see the attached image and description for Applying Markup to All Pages.

Sounds like its worth a shot!

@andrew-veggian thanks for sharing your process very clearly. From what I gather it sounds like you’re not taking the next step to turn the PDF into a Bluebeam “Set”, but rather working within the Combined PDF.

I’ve played around with marking up in Sets vs. the Combined PDF, and have found some drawbacks to Sets:

• Bookmarks don’t seam to work…

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Hi @Vince

Agreed, I’ve already found that disable line weights and grayscale in Bluebeam is super handy from the estimating side!

That said, in response to the original question about best practices I do think more designers should consider and implement steps to create easily legible drawings from the start. I always appreciate (cherish) when…

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Recently I’ve seen drawings from several design firms where all the line work is high contrast black and grey scale, and all callouts/notes are red. The legibility of these drawings is impeccable. This approach creates a clear hierarchy of information as there’s no mistaking a red arrow for a part of the building.

I suppose it complicates…

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Thanks all for the feedback. Ultimately I’ll be exporting all my takeoffs into a csv file, then Excel workbook, so I’m playing around with the best way to name and organize the takeoffs with that end goal in mind.

@troy-degroot yes, part of my logic is to save space in the tool bar by having the tool name quickly visible. Using the Subject as…

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So I’ve started building out custom Takeoff Tools for my team. I’d like to name each tool so it shows up in the Comment column in the detail view for each Toolset. I can’t suss out how to edit the Comment field; am I able the edit the meta data for the Comment field?

As shown in the attached image I’ve currently got the tools named by Label,…

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Hello all, it’s nice to see a few familiar faces and plenty of new folks here on the boards. I wanted to provide a quick intro and background before I start pinging you all with questions. 😄

Early in my career I was fabricating custom staircases out in Seattle, then I moved into a sales & estimating role for the same company. Back then we…

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