The Top 5 Reasons to Use Quantity Link in Revu

This story was originally published BY TROY DEGROOT on the Bluebeam Blog.

Let’s do a quick flashback to show a feature in Bluebeam Revu you might not be aware of, although it’s been around for several years.

One of my favorite releases of Revu came in 2017, when the company’s developers introduced several enhanced measurement tools allowing intelligent material takeoff workflows. How great is it when you can simply highlight the length of a beam and it automatically calculates and provides totals? Or using Dynamic Fill to find area measurements by pouring paint on a floorplan to fill the room or space?

My all-time favorite feature, however, is Quantity Link.

With this tool, Revu users are able to link Microsoft Excel files directly to the markups in a PDF drawing. As you might already know, the totals in Revu are calculated in the Markups List. Quantity Link, however, takes the information a little further. As you measure materials in Revu, the measurement or quantity totals are simultaneously updating in the connected Excel spreadsheet.

What exactly does that mean? Here are the top five benefits of using Quantity Link in your workflows.

Presentations: Whether you’re a developer presenting to a city or a city presenting to the public, visual, numerical data can be extremely important. When creating land use presentations for a new development, you can have your visual graphs update automatically, painting a clear picture of design intent.

Legacy Spreadsheets: Most specialty contractors have an existing spreadsheet they use for estimates. Those spreadsheets are one of the reasons you’re successful; why give them up when you can connect them to markups in Revu? Even if the spreadsheets aren’t rich with formulas, they can be created to match the requirements of your estimating software, allowing you to simply import.

Easily Update Revisions: Once you have all your markups in place collecting quantities, it’s really easy to simply update the existing markups when a revision comes in rather than starting over. With features like Document Compare and Overlay Pages, Revu will pinpoint exactly where changes were made so you can instantly update your markup and the spreadsheet at the same time. This also paints a pretty good picture for scope creep, justifying additional materials, schedule changes and labor.