[David Cutler]

To help us get the full picture @pkkuehnel what text are you using the format painter to format? Is it another text box, callout, cloud plus markup?

[David Cutler]

Can you provide an example of what you are looking to “find” @aschectman ?

I’m probably oversimplifying, but if you are looking to find a certain set of characters or values – say “1234” for example you could use a simple text search and then apply a count tool to all the results.

[David Cutler]

Great question @Chad Czerwinski !

What I’ve done in the past is to work paragraph by paragraph to see what has changed.

1. With both PDF documents open side by side use the Revu “Snapshot” tool to capture the text from the new document.

2. Paste the snapshot onto the original document

3. Use “change color” to make the snapshot of new text green

4. Position the snapshot over the paragraph and see what has changed

You can vary your snapshots based on how consistent the pages are, but this gives you options if paragraphs have been moved across page breaks.

This doesn’t work quite as well as the drawing compare, but it will get the job done. 🙂

Text-Overlay-Screenshot-2025-02-11-084130.png 41 KB Image File - Click to view

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[David Cutler]

Thank you for the reminder about that MCR episode. I remember seeing you do that live…

[David Cutler]

I was lucky with this set @Vince in that they all aligned well. Very frustrating when the don’t!

One new trick I picked up this time was using the “Match by Page Region” option – I hadn’t noticed that option before. Very handy when the page labels don’t match.

[David Cutler]

I may just work this right into my workflow going forward….

[David Cutler]

Reading your response to @Doug McLean and mine I’d suggest creating a “Sample Format” file that you could have open off to the side in a separate window. This PDF could have text boxes pre-formatted that you could select, then select the format painter and then apply back to your review document as needed.

It’s a 3 click solution, but it would get you there faster and more consistently than creating a new markup each time to format paint from and then delete.

[David Cutler]

That’s great that you found a solution @aschectman !

Out of curiosity, what is the work flow that you are needing this functionality for? As an estimator I’d expect that in addition to a count of each piece, W21x44 per your example, I’d also need the length of the piece so I’d be able to calculate the tonnage of steel to purchase.

[David Cutler]

Peter Noyes, who responded to your post on the “other” forum, is one of (if not “the”) lead programmers at Bluebeam. If he says it cannot be done there’s a 99.99% chance that it’s true. Not to say folks such as @lizlarsen and @isaac-harned couldn’t figure it out, but you’d be hard pressed to find someone who knows the product better than Peter.

BTW, as @troy-degroot mentioned, welcome to the Brainery! 🙂

[David Cutler]

Yup, that’s what I asked it to find…

I think I mis-understood your original question – you are looking for a method of finding all of the various sizes of W sections included in the document and counting them, without searching for a specific section each time.

Best I can offer would be to use multiple runs of the search feature and applying a count markup as you find them. Again, not what you are looking to do, but would get it done.

Perhaps @lizlarsen will chime in on this one…

[David Cutler]

I created a simple word doc using your sample text and used it to create a PDF with the example text. The search tool seemed to find both fine – see screen shot below.

Still a manual process, so I’m not sure that is what you are looking for – but the search in Revu appears to be able to find both of your examples…

[David Cutler]

I also use the “hold down scroll wheel to pan” built in function regularly so I need to be careful not to knock the wheel into undo/redo mode by accident. Guess I might need to do some finger exercises to build up the stability of my scroll wheel finger so I don’t “knock” when I pan.🤣

[David Cutler]

I set up the same yesterday afternoon @Vince ! Great minds think alike. 🙂

The undo/redo on the wheel is going to take some getting used to. Might have to try to build a macro with a few pauses into the string as when I “wheel left” it seems to repeat the undo multiple times…

[David Cutler]

I did add “save” after I made my post. I like the undo & redo ideas. 🙂

[David Cutler]

I forgot to ask if they tried closing all the windows, restarting their machine, and then re-launching Revu? 🤣

What’s funny, or perhaps not funny, is that sometimes I find restarting my computer clears glitches like these up…