The latest update for Bluebeam Revu has recently been released; you can find the release notes at this link.
Independent Length Measurement units. In previous versions, a user would calibrate a page, say in feet and inches, and all length measurements would be locked to that unit. Length measurements can now be set to any preferred unit. Create a measurement and change the unit in the properties. TIP: if the default measurement is not in the desired unit, change the unit then set that as the new default by right-clicking.
A refined Calibration tool. The name has been changed from Calibrate to Set Scale. After the tool has been launched, the dialog is a little different. In previous versions, the Pick Points calibration window would appear first. Now, the Apply Scales page appears first. The user chooses either preset or custom scales, or they choose to calibrate using selected points. Also, in this same form, the user can choose to apply the scale to a selected range of pages and add the custom scale to a preset for later use. TIP: to remove a preset, click the garbage can icon in the Measurement tab.
Awhile back I was teaching a Bluebeam Revu basics class for a group of civil engineers and designers. An issue quickly came up that changed the way I teach, and it was so obvious.
I was using the same data sets in all my basics classes to show markups and measurements, but it wasn’t relevant to the civil discipline in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. So, I quickly collected some new data sets and drew back on my industry experience to develop training tailored to those users.
As a complement to my last post, 11 Tools to Ease the Punch Walk Process, I want to discuss five tools or workflows you may not be aware of that specifically apply—but aren’t limited to—the world of civil design and construction.
First, let’s look at some of the differences between civil drawings and other disciplines like architectural, structure, MEP, fire, etc.
Starting with the obvious, civil drawings are drawn at a much smaller scale. Because of the size of many jobsites, developments and roadways, drawings are showing a much larger area on each sheet.
Also, most civil drawings don’t include dimensions or measurements. This might give some the illusion they’re not drawn to scale, but that couldn’t be more wrong. Those curvy contour lines are located very specifically.
Obviously, everyone regardless of occupation can use the Markup tools in Bluebeam Revu to make comments on drawings and documents. I’ll skip over those and get right to my favorite five innovative ways to use Bluebeam Revu as a civil designer or engineer.
Overlay satellite imagery
Whether you do a screenshot or some other method for acquiring satellite images, be sure to include the scale in the image. This will make it easier to calibrate the image. If the scale isn’t available, you’re still in luck. Maybe you know the curb-to-curb dimension or a building footprint; you can calibrate from that also. Once you have the image calibrated, you can start to overlay markups for easements, utilities, signage or even site staging material and equipment. If you’re doing resurfacing or flatwork, you could even do material estimates.
Calibrating Plan & Profile drawings with different X-Y scales
If you’re working with plan and profile drawings for roadways or power distribution, often the horizontal scale is drastically different from the vertical scale, making it difficult to rely on any accuracy in measurements. In the Measurement Panel in Revu, you will find the ability to calibrate the X and Y scales separately. Now you can do measurements and allow Revu to do all the complicated math for you.
Ideas for Cut & Fill calculations
The contour lines on a civil plan represent the vertical grade change. Depending on the size of the plan or map, this could be one foot or 1,000. To estimate cut and fill quantities, you can create volume measurements using those contours and average depths. (Maybe this video will explain it better.)
Combining several PDFs into one large area map
I’ve been asked this several times from the mechanical, electrical and plumbing teams as well. How can we do line-based length measurements when the material starts on one sheet and continues onto another?
If you start a new PDF with an oversized blank sheet, you can use the Snapshot tool to collect portions of separate sheets, pasting them onto the new document. When using Snapshot, the image comes in at the same scale it was taken from, so you can easily piece them all together like a puzzle. I suggest grouping them once you have the puzzle together so you don’t accidentally move something.
Bidding and tracking field survey projects
Maybe you have a last-minute bid due for a scanning or survey project and don’t have access to the site. Using the sequence or count tools in Revu, you can quickly mark all the locations you’ll need to perform a scan.
Each mark represents a setup, scan, takedown and processing, allowing you to estimate the time needed. Using different colors or layers, you could assign different time estimates if you have to remove ceiling tiles or drudge through the mud to capture the required data.
Use the same bid drawing when performing those scans on site. Quickly change the Status of the Markup to Complete and, if needed, attach an image of the equipment setup. In the field, you might even use different colors if you’re running several scanners at the same time. The more data the better, in case the scope changes unexpectedly.
I know all these functions are possible in advanced software created for design. My intent is to show that you don’t need expensive CAD software to get information out of the PDF drawings. If you like these tips and want to see the technical steps, check out my YouTube Playlist.
Hopefully, you’re inspired to look a little deeper into the civil workflows possible in Bluebeam Revu. How are you using Revu in your workflows? I’d love to hear your feedback or any new ideas you may have had while reading. You can find and message me on LinkedIn.
Today I want to talk about Punch Walks, QA/QC, or whatever you might call it when you collect field data during or after construction.
I started my career detailing structural steel. As a result, I was often required to juggle large plan rolls, tape measures, pens, and a level to measure existing conditions.
These measurements would then be brought back to the office to make sure the railings and stairs fit perfectly when fabricated. Obviously, this was before emerging technologies like building information modeling (BIM) and laser scanning.
So, how has Bluebeam Revu improved field data documentation?
Here are 11 of my favorite Revu tools that ease field data collection and distribution.
Standardizing plan symbology will replace long, written notes—increasing consistency, legibility and speed. These symbols are manually created ahead of time or on the fly. To save the most time, I suggest building your symbol list in Microsoft Excel. Importing the CSV file automatically generates large lists of symbols, along with the associated comment.
Embed images, 360-degree images, or even videos with audio giving a clear description of the field conditions. The Flipbook is a clean way to add many images directly where they apply on the plan rather than off to the side someplace with a reference number.
Create a template PDF form to quickly fill in the information needed. Before I save the template, I like to add a blank page after the form. This provides a place to drop a related image or Snapshot from a plan or detail, including clouds and other markups. Save this to your template folder for quick access every time.
Speaking of the Snapshot, quickly grab a screenshot of the affected area of the drawing, saving it directly to the Clipboard. Paste this image on your RFI form, in a written report, or directly into an email. Your markups will come over, assuring the form matches exactly what’s on the large plan.
Before each site walk, create a layer naming it with the date, then set it to Current. This will record all the markups on an isolated layer. Turning layers on and off allows you to track inspection progress.
Create Spaces to track where on the plan your markups are located. If you walk into a room on-site and want to know all the information associated with that room, simply sort your markups List by Spaces.
Create custom Statusesto track progress on your projects, whether you use them to mark things complete for yourself internally or the general contractor who owns the documents. Changing a Status will automatically stamp the time, date and author. These status updates cannot be edited or removed by anyone.
A custom Legend is a great way to represent the Markups List visually directly on the sheet. This could include a description of the symbol or even the number of times it was placed.
Finally, Summary Reports are extremely powerful using Bluebeam Revu. Creating a PDF Summary report of all the markups on the drawing can be a clean and easy way to transfer information to others on the team. This is especially true when including a Capture Media Summary, which will embed all the images into the document.
You may be using some of these tips already. I hope you learned a few more to streamline and improve the quality of your Punch Walks, QA/QC or whatever you might call it when you collect field data during or after construction.
Most construction projects are massive undertakings. Teams of architects and engineers work tirelessly preparing large volumes of design documents before they ultimately make their way onto a construction jobsite, where workers labor vigorously to build off those plans down to the tiniest details.
The evolution of technology in the construction industry has made the arduous task of managing the flow of such large project document loads easier. Once initial plans are made, multiple rounds of revisions must take place among varying project stakeholders before they’re ultimately pushed out to the field, where more revisions may occur as new challenges emerge.
Pablo Giraldo, an assistant construction technology manager with The Walsh Group in Atlanta, Georgia, is one among a crowd of passionate and tech-savvy construction professionals who have embraced digital transformation in the industry. Giraldo has spent a lot of time, including through his own growing YouTube channel, figuring out how to make digital transformation of document management work on his projects.
Here is a breakdown of how Giraldo leads document management using the varying tools within Bluebeam Revu, based on his recent presentation as part of Bluebeam’s ongoing virtual events series.
Create Sets
The first thing Giraldo does to initiate his document management workflow is to create document Sets in Revu.
Sets allow Revu users to open a collection of plan documents as if they were a single file. Pages in a Set are organized in a specific and sorted order, including any revisions. Sets ultimately allow users to navigate through multiple files in Revu as if they were one document.
Publishing the latest Set ultimately allows files to load faster for workers in the field; it also allows a check-out/check-in system that allows users to check-in/out a document one person at a time.
Next, Giraldo Batch Links his Set. Batch Link in Revu automatically creates navigational hyperlinks within a particular group of documents based on user-defined criteria. Batch Link, which is only available in the eXtreme edition of Revu, can be run against multiple PDFs or a single, multi-paged PDF.
“This is beneficial as you’re going through the drawings to easily flip back and forth through different documents,” Giraldo said.
This is particularly helpful for workers in the field, Giraldo said, as they can transition between different documents on their iPads, looking at different sections of drawings as they spot important details while working on the jobsite.
Hyperlink drawings
In addition to Batch Linking document Sets, Giraldo often uses hyperlinks throughout different documents in other ways to help provide field workers and other collaborators with easy ways to find and reference critical project information as they work.
Links, which can be placed on anything in a PDF, including markups, can include anything from linking to other project documents to reference websites to any other important, web-accessible information.
Once Giraldo has set up all his Sets, Batched Linked and set up hyperlinks to other documents or resources throughout the documents, now it’s time to publish the Sets and send them out to workers in the field. There, workers will use the Bluebeam app on iPads to sync to the latest document Sets to reference and work off while in the field.
Anytime a worker in the field can connect to the internet, either via WiFi or cellular connectivity, they can hit “Sync” in the Bluebeam app. Then all the documents will automatically download the latest set of drawings, Giraldo said.
Create dashboard
One of the powerful ways to help everyone collaborating on documents—whether they’re in-office engineers approving plans or field workers implementing them—is to create a digital project dashboard in Revu. Digital dashboards are hyperlinked, button-enabled PDFs that can be configured and designed such that users have a simple place for reference for all project documents and resources, alleviating the need for anyone to have to navigate through complex folder structures to find documents.
Giraldo said once he’s completed the above steps, he ultimately creates two project dashboards: one for workers who interact with documents in the office, and another for workers in the field. The dashboard for workers in the office is slightly more robust, with multiple buttons directing workers to key documents and resources. The dashboard for field workers is less detailed, allowing them a simple and easy-to-understand interface as they need to review documents while working on hectic jobsites.
Studio, which provides users with document management and real-time collaboration capabilities, is another tool Giraldo uses on his projects. Creating groups within Studio allows the administrator—in this case Giraldo—the ability to provide different users access to different documents within the Studio Project as well as the ability to collaborate on document review in Studio Sessions.
Users can have three levels of permissions within Studio: read, read/write and read/write/delete. “This can function as your server,” Giraldo said of Studio Projects, although most larger firms ultimately store their files elsewhere. “I’ve seen small companies rely on Studio Projects entirely for their document management.”
Bluebeam for iPad
A major asset for Giraldo’s document management implementation with his projects has been use of iPad in the field. The Revu for iPad app, in addition to giving field workers access to view project documents nearly like an in-office worker would on a desktop computer, is especially great when it comes to project tracking, Giraldo said.
Moreover, Giraldo has used tablets in the field to take pictures of completed work to store in the document, such that workers can view project elements as they’re installed within the drawings as construction progresses. Giraldo has also taken to dictating notes using the audio recording capability within the iPad app to make notes on certain markups within drawings while out in the field.
Track work with statuses
Lastly, the Markups List in Revu includes a Status column that allows Giraldo and other users the ability to track the progress of different project elements. What’s more, the status column is followed by a color column that allows users to color-code different statuses.
Giraldo on a recent project, for instance, had three different statuses displaying what stage a series of pre-cast panels were at: ordered, delivered, installed. To set a status, users can right click on a markup, click “Set a Status,” then pick the project element. This can be done both in the field on a tablet and in an office on a desktop.
Streamlined efficiency
Overall, this digital document management workflow has helped Giraldo and the rest of his project team cut down on printing and use of paper documents, which often led to confusion and disorganization on jobsites. It has also helped field workers be more efficient, Giraldo said, as they no longer must account for and reference rolls of paper documents.
Thanks to these tools provided by Revu, as well as construction professionals like Giraldo who are willing to figure out the connective elements of establishing a fully functional digital document workflow, construction workers have an example of how to store, organize, track and find important project documents and resources digitally, making the office-to-field document flow easier to manage.
ne of the downstream effects of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has been a strong projected uptick in cloud software conversions. With employees increasingly working remotely, software needs to be available anytime, anywhere. Software doesn’t have to be cloud-based to be remotely accessible, but many chief information officers (CIO), even at midsize companies, have had cloud transformation on their roadmaps, and the pandemic has provided the occasion to ask: if not now, when?
Moving key software applications to the cloud, which has already taken place across the construction industry, will have significant implications for the organisation – most obviously on the IT team that has been maintaining the software on-premises. In financial terms, the cloud-based construction management software transformation is a change from licensing software and paying annual maintenance fees to an on-demand and pay-as-you-go model. You rent the application instead of buying it.
For end-users, a smooth cloud migration may be almost imperceptible. For instance, a user logs in to their cloud-based construction software application, works with colleagues on finalising a set of documents for a large office building project and passes them on for approval without even a hint of consideration of the technology making that series of interactions possible.
Here are answers to common questions construction professionals may have about cloud collaboration in the construction industry and the technology behind it.
Where’s my software?
It’s not on your computer anymore. It’s on a remote server, being delivered to you whenever and wherever you need it. Is that something to be concerned about?
According to Jim Prothe, marketing director at Magenium, an IT solutions consulting firm based in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, there are good reasons to be excited about the change.
‘A friend of mine has a business that rents an office in a Chicago suburb’, Prothe said. ‘Last summer, another tenant in their building had a fire over a weekend. All the sprinkler systems turned on, and the application server was toast. They had to spend the next two weeks rebuilding that server from month-old tape backups. So, they lost a month of data, including all their billings. If they’d been operating in a cloud environment that had an outage in a region, they’d have had built-in failover capacity; they would have been able to spin up capacity in another region, and their business would never miss a beat.’
Where is this server?
It’s no longer in the company’s server room – or, in cloud computing parlance, it’s no longer ‘on-premise’. Where it’s situated depends on where your business is located and what kind of cloud you’re using.
What kind of cloud?
There are at least three different kinds of cloud service infrastructure that drives cloud collaboration in the construction industry:
Public cloud: You, the end-user company, are renting services from a large vendor, perhaps even a global enterprise like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services or RackSpace. Typically, your company is sharing the rented infrastructure with other companies (what the vendor calls ‘tenants’). Your applications and your data are architecturally walled off from those of other tenants, but the bits are located on shared machines. In the early days of cloud adoption, some tenants worried about the possibility of proprietary data bleeding over into other tenants’ spaces. But growing confidence in providers and in cloud technology has generally done away with that concern.
Private cloud: This generally refers to an infrastructure with all the characteristics of cloud architecture, but one built and maintained by your company. Large enterprises may prefer a private cloud for extremely sensitive data. It’s an exceptional situation for a mid-sized architecture, engineering or construction firm.
Hybrid cloud: Some organisations maintain applications in both public and private cloud infrastructures.
As an end-user, the type of cloud probably won’t affect the availability or performance of the software.
What are we getting from the server?
There are at least three different levels of commitment your company could make to its cloud transformation:
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Your company rents physical space on the provider’s servers and relies on the provider to keep them running. But that’s it – your own IT people set up and maintain all the software.
Platform as a Service (PaaS): In addition to the hardware, the provider maintains the operating system and all the other architectural features of the environment. Your people still maintain the applications.
Software as a Service (SaaS): The provider maintains everything from the operating system to the applications; your company pays to use these services on an as-needed basis.
Where’s my data?
Some of it is local – but the bulk of it is in the cloud. The physical location of the server generally makes little or no difference to the end-user, other than in exceptional circumstances involving regulatory compliance. Under Sarbanes-Oxley regulations, enacted after the Enron accounting scandal in the early 2000s, financial services firms often need to be able to specify to regulators where their account data is being stored. Other regulations come into play if they operate internationally. You can ensure, contractually, that your data stays within a certain region or on a certain server.
The server’s physical location isn’t entirely irrelevant when it comes to cloud collaboration in the construction industry. The speed at which data packets travel their tortuous routes across the internet is breathtaking, but if the server is far enough away, the end-user will experience a noticeable performance lag. This is why public cloud providers – and large organisations that host their own private clouds – have multiple, redundant servers distributed among regions. The infrastructure will be designed to route your data through the nearest server and to reroute to the next-nearest server if your region’s system goes down.
‘Generally, the large cloud service providers give you the option to choose the region where your primary servers will be located’, Prothe said. ‘Nearly every metropolitan area will have its own dedicated servers.’
Why are we using cloud software?
In the short run, it’s cheaper to rent than to buy. The SaaS provider can price services inexpensively because it enjoys huge economies of scale.
From an accounting standpoint, there are benefits in reducing capital costs and increasing operating expenditures. Cloud service contracts generally come under operating expenditures. ‘During the 2008 financial crisis, capital budgets evaporated’, Prothe said. ‘Businesses still had to operate and moving applications to the cloud was one way to keep going. In some industries, we’re seeing the same thing happen because of COVID.’
Renting cloud software reduces the burden on a company’s IT services, because it has less infrastructure to maintain. ‘A friend of mine who runs an HVAC engineering company complains about the burden of supporting on-premises software’, Prothe said. ‘It constantly needs to be patched, and each time that introduces a new security vulnerability. The investment in IT resources to manage those changes is pretty daunting for a small engineering firm.’
Isn’t this risky for our secret stuff?
Some companies express concerns about their most sensitive data, but the cloud can be more secure than having your own data centres.
A global company like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft may have thousands of full-time security people, assisted by artificial intelligence tools designed to spot or even prevent service interruptions or hacker intrusions. Their automation tools can detect unusual activity across the network, such as odd data traffic, and analyse it quickly to size it up as a potential threat. And, of course, traffic over cloud networks is encrypted end to end. The provider’s reputation is riding on the strength of that encryption.
‘Your instinct may tell you to maintain close control over important applications’, Prothe said. ‘But you need to ask yourself who is better at maintaining a secure infrastructure – a cloud service provider whose survival depends on their reputation for security, or your IT guys?’
There must be a downside to cloud adoption, right?
There is one, obvious downside: users need to have a reliable internet connection.
Still, start-up costs are cheaper, although cloud software can cost more in the long run. ‘We have a lot of companies move applications from on-premises to the cloud, and they often need help optimising their spend’, Prothe said.’“You can spend a lot of money quickly in the cloud. You spin up a lot of power, and you pay for it on a monthly basis, so you may not notice it. You can often dial down the power you consume during off-hours when people are less likely to be online.’
If the data structure in the cloud application is different from that of the on-premises software, the data may have to be cleaned up, restructured and normalised. Migrating data to the cloud can be expensive, cumbersome and risky if undertaken without expert help.
Is everybody moving to cloud software?
It depends. Some companies are using only the basic applications like email in the cloud; some are ‘cloud-first’ – the default, when introducing a new application, is to adopt the cloud version.
It also depends on the application. Many software companies are themselves moving to a cloud-first product development roadmap, gradually transitioning their long-time customers from on-premises installations to their cloud offerings. Many new software vendors are likely to be cloud-only.
So, the next time you log on to use any cloud-based application to review a design or communicate a set of document changes, now you know how the technology behind those transactions truly works.
As many organizations across the globe begin to bring employees safely back into the office after months of remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, facilities managers are emerging as critical players in the transition. And Bluebeam Revu is essential in making it happen.
While employees have been busy adapting to working remotely, facilities leaders have been spending much of the last six months preparing for employees’ inevitable return to the office—whenever that may be.
For many, that day won’t come until later in 2021. Several large companies including Google, Facebook and Salesforce.com have announced that their employees won’t be required to return to company offices until as late as August 2021.
Others are considering embracing remote work indefinitely. Twitter is giving employees the green light to consider the option, which will allow many of its employees to permanently escape the high cost of living around the company’s home city of San Francisco. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, has said that the social media company will eventually move toward having half its workforce remote by 2030. The Menlo Park, California-based company also just hired a director of remote work as it plans for the shift.
Not everyone, however, is embracing the remote work movement. Reed Hastings, founder and co-chief executive of Netflix, recently told The Wall Street Journal that he hasn’t seen any positives from full-time remote work. “Not being able to get together in person, particularly internationally, is a pure negative,” he said.
A big, but manageable, undertaking
Organizations are anxious to get employees safely back into the workplace, and determining what that will look like is a complex process, according to Candice Stong, a project manager on Bluebeam’s facilities team. This team manages the construction technology company’s global office portfolio, including its Pasadena, California, headquarters as well as offices across the United States, Europe, the U.K. and Australia.
“To say it’s been crazy over the past six months is an understatement,” Stong said. “We all work from home now, but, eventually, we’re going to be back in the office. So, we have focused on what that will look like according to the requirements set forth in the various safety protocols.”
All workspaces are not created equal, and for most organizations, updating the workplace to meet the various public health protocols is necessary. In recent years, many companies embraced open, flexible, activity-based spaces, along with densely populated workstations with assigned seating. Others adopted a flex-work model using “hot-desking.”
These strategies, which allowed for increased density, have created a challenge given physical distancing requirements in a post-COVID environment. For Bluebeam, clusters of workstations situated closely together wouldn’t suffice to maintain the six-foot physical distance between employees necessary to meet public health protocols. Narrow hallways would have to be re-routed into one-way paths.
Rules around conference room occupancy and use would need to be instituted. In-office kitchen areas would need to be reimagined, along with the common areas and other informal gathering spaces.
Additionally, floor markers, as visual cues, ensuring physical distance requirements are met, as well as zones for temperature checks, are markings that were included on the return-to-office plan documents.
Enabling quick-and-nimble planning
As the early weeks of all-company remote work settled in, Stong began receiving inquiries from vendors offering to assist Bluebeam with workspace reconfigurations and occupancy management solutions considering the likely post-COVID requirements to come. “With access to Revu, utilizing outside resources to manage the return-to-office workspace planning didn’t seem to make sense,” Stong said she remembered thinking at the time.
Given the uncertainty of the pandemic and how our workspace would need to adapt to continuous changes in health protocols and government agency requirements, Stong said she needed to be more self-sufficient with creating relevant workspace plans and be swiftly responsive to changes.
“Being solely reliant on third-party vendors to map out the future of our workspace would take time and money,” she continued.
The larger situation surrounding COVID-19 was seemingly changing each day, which meant occupancy management and workspace reconfigurations required for a safe return would need a quick-and-nimble approach. An approved plan one week might become obsolete the next.
Even for facilities managers that choose to work with an outside resource, it would be smart for them to collaborate in the reconfiguration effort as much as possible. This way, if and when last-minute changes do come to light, the facilities manager can work with the plan documents themselves to institute the change—all without having to wait for the contractor or architect to respond under potentially tight approval deadlines with regulators.
“I think the challenge is facility teams now need to know their buildings better than ever,” said Ryan McGuinness, Bluebeam’s North American enterprise sales director, who interacts often with facilities managers at construction and architecture firms. “They’re trying to do whatever they can with the tools they have, but then they also need to communicate that information to the masses.”
What’s more, facilities managers’ ownership of the return-to-office plan and redesign allows them to take advantage of learning how to use some of the tools their architectural counterparts use to plan and plot out changes. Of course, becoming an expert in the tools architects use for design—like Revit or AutoCAD—is likely unrealistic. Luckily, there is another industry standard tool that is easy to adopt, putting the power in facilities managers’ hands.
Enter Bluebeam Revu
That tool is Bluebeam Revu, whose intuitive PDF markup and editing capabilities make it a manageable but powerful tool for facilities managers to learn when it comes to creating, managing and communicating return-to-office workspace plans.
Aside from detailed and industry specific reconfigurations and markups that will need to take place in workspace plan documents, it’s likely that many non-technical company stakeholders will eventually need to view and sign off on any final plans. This makes Studio in Revu, Bluebeam’s cloud-based document management and real-time collaboration portal, a valuable tool for accessible document communication and approvals.
“I see a lot of our customers being able to use Revu’s advanced markups to give a visual story of what’s going on with their current layout and with what needs to be changed,” McGuinness said. “And then also being able to communicate that through Studio to anyone involved. Studio is going to give you an audit trail of all those markups.”
Revu tools for facilities managers
There are specific tools and capabilities facilities managers should be using in Revu when embarking on return-to-office planning.
Basic Markup Tools: Simple markup tools like rectangles and circles, etc., can be used to identify and manage occupancy and physical distance requirements, with fill colors to designate, visualize and communicate various seat assignments. “You could do colored rectangles and place them over desks, but they can still have opacity,” said Andrew Gaer, Bluebeam’s technical account management director.
Custom Line Styles: Revu allows users to create custom line styles to designate different things. For instance, if a facilities manager wanted to present changes in “path of travel” on the return-to-work plan documents for specific hallway traffic, they can use a custom line style that has text in line with that, according to Omar Sheikh, Bluebeam’s senior professional services manager. “It could also be a text box even that says, ‘Temperature Check Station,’” Sheikh said.
Image Markups: Revu allows facilities managers to take photos of certain things in an office or use web-based images to indicate hand sanitization stations or floor markings and include them in the PDF for employees to view and reference. Gaer said this tool could be used to take pictures of temperature check or hand sanitation stations, for example, so office workers can see exactly where they should look for when they return to the office.
Sketch to Scale: This allows facilities managers to create shapes such as circles or rectangles to the exact scale needed for an office plan. If a facilities manager wanted to designate an area as off limits, for instance, they could use this tool to create a rectangle with the exact dimensions of the real-life area. Also, if a facilities manager wanted to create a circle designating six feet to mark up areas requiring strict physical distancing protocols, they can use this tool to do it.
Legends: The markups Legend is able to help facilities managers create a plan document that will ultimately be simple to understand for any collaborators or viewers either marking up, approving the plan document or using the plan when back in the office.
Calibration: This tool will allow facilities managers to determine the proper scale for the plan document. This will ensure all measurements moving forward will be accurate—an important element considering that proper distancing and spacing is required in a return-to-office plan document.
Studio: Once an initial draft of the return-to-office plan document is ready for review and additional collaboration, facilities managers can manage the document (or set of documents) in Studio Projects, Bluebeam’s cloud-based document management solution. They can then start a Studio Session to invite several different reviewers or collaborators to add notes and make markups of their own in real-time no matter their location.
Tool Set: Facilities managers will likely need to make changes to their plan for multiple locations within their organization, so they’ll want to add these newly created tools to a Tool Chest in Revu so they can easily be accessed for future use.
Digital dashboards offer teams a centralized, easily navigable hub for critical project documents and information. Don’t create one without making these considerations
Construction projects are loaded with complexity. Hundreds—sometimes thousands—of documents are assembled and distributed to scattered teams on frenzied jobsites, where dozens of subcontractors are hard at work building off carefully detailed plans.
Time is money in construction, which means clear, accurate and expedient transfer of information is paramount to a project’s success. Aside from the hordes of design plans (many now digital) construction workers need to efficiently complete their work, there are several additional resources that they need at their disposal, most of which live on the internet or in other cloud-based tools.
Thankfully, the evolution of construction technology, digital transformation and collaboration have made accessing and organizing this information more convenient. Bluebeam Revuis one of the tools that has grown to help construction, engineering and architecture workers in this area.
Revuallows users to create customized digital dashboards for their project teams so that all relevant construction documents and supplemental reference information can be neatly organized and accessed through Studio Projects—regardless of whether team members are in the field or in an office.
“The whole point of a digital dashboard is to eliminate that file hierarchy of folders and eliminate the time spent looking for files,” said Lillian Magallanes, Bluebeam’s industry alliances manager, who has extensive experience creating digital dashboards.
Building digital dashboards in Revu and providing collaborators access via Studio Projects can be as simple as hyperlinking to a few of a project’s most-relevant design documents or as comprehensive asoutfitting an intricate web of links using JavaScript to create a one-of-a-kind branded experience. The final product can beused not just by project teams during construction but also by owners and facilities managers throughout the building’s lifecycle.
Here are four considerations to keep in mind as users build out digital project dashboards:
Start with the end in mind
What type of worker will be using the dashboard to retrieve information?
Will they be architects or engineers in an office on a desktop computer or laptop? Or will they be field superintendents or subcontractors needing to track down a design spec in the middle of a hot, blistering day on a jobsite?
What’s more, aside from the user’s environment, what frame of mind might they be in when looking for the information linked in a digital dashboard?
Starting with this end in mind, according to Magallanes, is essential before starting to assemble a digital dashboard in Revu. “The last thing most people involved in a construction project want to do is have to learn something new that is complex just so they can find a file and send it to someone else,” Magallanes said.
Map out information and navigation
Once the frame of the end-user’s mind has been determined, then it’s time to map out the navigation of where the different hyperlinked buttons and elements of a dashboard will lead. Simple dashboards may only include a handful of buttons leading to the mostrelevant design documents.
More comprehensive digital dashboards, however, may involve a few different layers of navigation that allow users to find and access disparate pieces of information for a project in a few quick clicks, while also linking to tools and resources either found on the web or as part of other cloud-based digital applications.
“This is really going to help someone think what levels of information need to be brought up,” Magallanes said.
Understanding how information is presented—as well as the user experience of navigating through it—is essential when building an effective digital dashboard.
Bolster collaborator access with Studio Projects
Creating a simple-to-use project dashboard is only half of what makes it so valuable. The other half is ensuring that the people using it can access it easily and efficiently.
This is where Studio Projects, a document management capability in Revu, comes in. After creating and configuring a detailed dashboard in Revu, the mostefficient way to make the most out of it is to host it for both internal and external collaborators with ease through Studio Projects.
Hosting a project dashboard in Studio allows teams to access corresponding documents from the dashboard without having to leave the Studio environment. This makes accessing often-viewed documents faster since those documents are not hosted in a company’s protected server or other cloud-storage service but in a shared Studio Project.
Consider making design a priority
Some projects may see a digital dashboard as a simple, easy-to-access portal for a few significant project contributors on a jobsite. Others, meanwhile, may decide to build something expansive for a large build where dozens and dozens of subcontractors are using the tool, oftentimes jumping in at the mid-point of a project.
Still, for some general contractors, creating a comprehensive digital dashboard is an opportunity to create a branded experience—not just for the subcontractors collaborating on the project, but the building’s owners and facilities managers after the building is fully operational.
These situations might call for a more extensive and thoughtful digital dashboard design using enhanced graphic design and web-development tools.
“Larger contractors are definitely going to want to invest in creating something beautiful that’s aesthetically pleasing,” Magallanes said, “because that project dashboard is something that is going to the building’s owner, so it’s something that the owner and their team are going to use and remember.”
Smaller contractors, however, may not feel like they need to worry about design if they’re simply looking for something functional. But if the dashboard is going to be viewed by other contractors—or even owners—it might be worthwhile to ensure the dashboard is built with the end-user in mind. If the owner will eventually view it, design might be more critically important; if the dashboard is only for workers in the field, a basic setupmay be more acceptable.
Keep it simple
Above all, don’t be overly concerned with creating an expansive digital dashboard if the team or project doesn’t require it.
The goal of a digital dashboard is, after all, to reduce complexity and the amount of time workers spend looking for relevant project files. The less users have tothink when using the dashboard, the better.
“We’re reducing learning time, we’re reducing the time looking for files,” Magallanes said. “And we’re also just reducing the number of clicks that people have to get through. We’re trying to expedite the information for the right person at the right time.”
Now your project is created, you will need to upload all documents needed for your project which need to be shared with your team or your partners in the project.
To do so, select between adding a folder, a file or create a new folder with its own structure
Note: In this part, I strongly recommend using the same folder organization you are using usually in your company. Remember you are creating a copy of your documents where they will be updated. It does not mean it will automatically update the folder on your computer. Only the documents stocked in Project will be.
From now on, you have uploaded your project files and you are ready to collaborate with Project. But before starting, there are some rule you will need to know in order to understand how to work with it.
How to Use Projects and Projects with Sessions
As you should know now, we are working in a document management context. It means there are a bunch of securities and processes to protect every user. Check in / check out is part of it.
Basically, when you will need to use a document, you will have 3 choices; open it for viewing, open it for working on it, open it to work on it with collaborator.
The first one does not require to check out the document. As you will not change anything, there is no need to create a new version.
The 2 others will require every user to check out the document from project to work on it and, at the end of your work, check in the document as new version in order to quickly sum up what you’ve did.
Checking out a document means you lock the document for edition to other users the moment you are using it until you check in the document in Project.
When you check out the document, it will appear on the right side of Project’s interface as Pending
Click on it and start working.
You will notice a specific icon in your document’s tab. Depending of the status of your document, the icon will change. If you click in this icon while working in a check out document, you will access a menu.
If other users try to open the document when it is checked out, they will only have the possibility to download a copy on their computer, but they will not be able to overwrite your document (unless doing so manually by the administrator of the Project).
If you need to work with other people at the same time on a document hosted in project, it’s quite simple. Just, right click on your file and choose Add to a New Session
Now, Bluebeam will launch the dialog box of Session where you will name your session. You will be able to invite people with email address in the Session interface directly to work with you.
You will run this session like you did so when you create a Session directly (without using Project) and finish it as usual.
But this time, you will need to check in the document once the session is over in order to save the new version of your plan in Project. You have two ways to do this;
Once you finished the session, the icon of your tab will change from a whiteboard to a Check Out icon .
Click on it and select Check In. Then write a comment to explain what has been done and Check In.
Or, you can go back to your project interface and do the same with your document that will be in the right side of the interface under pending.
You know now how to start and set up a Project with Bluebeam. For sure, there are some advanced options we did not developed in this tutorial (creating group with different rights in the session, make some files viewable by certain user only, synchronizing documents, Managing and supporting Studio Session and Project with Studio Prime, connect Studio Session with BIM 360 …).
But we will see that in a future article depending of your comments and feedbacks
Quick FAQ
What type of document can I upload?
All type of document. Users who would need to access these files will have to own the software required to run / open the file (except for PDF which will open in Bluebeam)
What is the limitation of Studio Sessions and Studio Projects?
Description
Studio Projects
Studio Sessions
License Required
Host only
Host Only
Bluebeam ID required (free)
Yes
Yes
Formats supported
All types of files
PDF Only
Max file Size
Unlimited
1 Gb each document
Max files allowed
Unlimited
5000
Max space allowed
Unlimited
Unlimited
Max attendees at the same time
Unlimited
500
Scheduled Expiry
No
Yes
How much time my documents will be hosted on Bluebeam server after finishing and deleting my project?
90 days maximum unless you need more time. The save on Bluebeam Cloud Server are not accessible by anybody else (not even Bluebeam employee) and has been created to let user have a chance to download their document if they forgot to do so.
Why should I put an expiry date in my session?
It’s your choice to do so. It exists to be part of a process and avoid having to bump a limit because you forgot to close a session. Remember you could use Studio with partners outside your organization. Depending of the size of your project, 500 users can be easily reach. So, you better want to organize a process to avoid the situation.
Studio Project is a cloud-based light document management system that allows people to centralize and access their project data using Bluebeam Revu Interface. Files within Studio Project can be checked out for editing (ex: revisions) and checked back in to create different version of a single document instead of creating multiple duplicate of the same or, overwriting important data.
Before Starting
1ST STEP – Create a Bluebeam ID
In order to be able to use Bluebeam Studio services, you need to create a Bluebeam ID. It’s free and simple.
Basically, open your Bluebeam Revu, then go in Bluebeam Studio section and click on Sign In
Right after, the following dialog box will appear fill the form and finish by clicking on CREATE AN ACCOUNT button
You will have to review the terms of use and click the I ACCEPT button if you agree with these terms. A confirmation email will be sent after to confirm your Bluebeam ID.
Check your email (and spam box if you don’t see the email in your INBOX after 5 mins) and confirm your Bluebeam ID.
You are now set to start using Bluebeam Studio.
Part 1: Creating a Project
As previously written, Bluebeam Studio Project acts as a single source of truth for all your project documents. So, to maintain this statement, you will need to be able to understand what you can or cannot do with Studio Project. You will also need to know how to set up a project, to configure permissions and to share the information internally or externally.
To create a new project, go to Bluebeam Studio section and click connect. From there, you have 2 options: creating a Session or creating a Project.
Now, select Projects and then, click on the + (add) button (as circle in red) and select New Project as shown in the picture below
After doing so, a dialog box will appear, and you will be asked to name your Project
Let’s start from here. Most users are not familiar with Bluebeam Studio although it is becoming more and more useful and popular these days. So, let’s dig into to it and take a look at both Studio Session and Studio Project.
Studio Session:
A live collaboration tool that allows you to share and annotate your plan with your team with some restriction.
Studio Project:
A document management system that allows you to host, share and manage your document with an organized process and management tools.
So basically, you host your documents in Studio Project and use them in Studio Session to mark them up with your team. Not that complicated, eh?
Now, let’s jump in to see how to launch a Session and how to set your Project.
Creating a Session:
Go to Studio Icon –> Select Session
Click on + and select New Session or Join Session
If you decide to join an existing session, enter the Studio ID of this session and click OK
If you create a new Session, a dialog box will appear
From there, name your session, and upload one or multiple plans you need to work with.
Then, in Options, select what you allow your user to do with this (these) document(s) or even if you want, allowing them to upload documents. You can even set an expiration date and hour for the session.
Afterwards, your session will launch and this dialog box will appear
It will be here where you will need to invite users to join in your session. You can even add a message to give them a bit of a context.
If you are using Studio Project and already set Users groups, you can use them in Studio Session (even if the document is not hosted within project).
Last option, the Address Book. You can use your own address book to invite people.
Now your session is started, make sure to work on the right document. To check that, you need to have this icon before the name of your document in the tab like the picture below.
From there, you will be able to annotate and communicate within Studio Session. However, remember Sessions do not allow for changes to a PDF’s “core content ». It means you can place Markups and delete your own notes, but editing other attendee’s Markups is not allowed. You can think of this as, you are allowed to do “Surface Level” (adding a markup, editing a markup you added in the Session) changes to the PDF, but anything that goes deeper (form fields, adding pages) is not allowed. This is all to maintain the integrity of the PDF while multiple users are all collaborating in real time. Note about sessions: you can be invited or initiate multiple session. To leave a session, click on the icon and select the session to go back in it.
Finishing the session:
You finalized your revision with your team and are ready to go so now, it’s time to finish your session to.
To do so, click on the icon (#1) and a Dialog box will open. From there, you can overwrite the existing plan or save as new version of your plan.
Also, don’t forget to generate the report of the session. It will keep all information that have been produced in this session (from markups to messages written in the chat)
FAQ’s:
What happens if I have a new version?
Close the actual session, export all markups (or only the ones you want to bring to the next session) and then re-upload the document in the session.
Can I erase markups of other users?
No. It is part of the process to not be able to erase other user’s markups. Remember, it’s also a tool to help you track every notes and changes on plans.
You will be able to erase markups outside of the session. But there will always be a trace within the Session log.
to a Check Out icon 
.
before the name of your document in the tab like the picture below.
and select the session to go back in it.
(#1) and a Dialog box will open. From there, you can overwrite the existing plan or save as new version of your plan.