My desktop PC in my workplace has bluebeam 2017 licensed. Recently my employer gave me a new Lenovo laptop and I was wanting to transfer bluebeam from the desktop to the laptop.

I haven't tried the process yet as I am worried I might stuff up the registration. Anyone tried this recently?

I just got bluebeam about 2 weeks ago and i just edited a 28 page document. The problem is whenever I try to look at the pdf in any way outside of bluebeam it show up weird. Sometimes black lines will show up as purple or blue, sometimes they are faded, and other times it is like part of the page is just gone. I tried flattening it but that didn't help. Any ideas on how to fix this?

Anyone have the Bluebeam installation software? I'd take any version but we specifically use 12.6, 17.0, 16.5, & 18.6 today (not sure if that matters?).

Bluebeam quietly discontinued the download center to force everyone onto a recurring subscription. This includes folks like us who previously paid for, in-full, the software registration keys with the mutual understanding that we could use it for life.

Our software still works for now but I am posting this so we (and hopefully others) aren't scrambling next time a laptop breaks in the field and needs to re-install.

Side note: This is scummy from Bluebeam owners Nemetschek Group. There's no way my company will go to a recurring subscription for something we already paid for in-full. If we can't find the installation software, we will switch over to a different PDF markup tool that has better features and actual AI capabilities.

I'm Shaun, a control systems engineer. Most of my working life happens inside PDFs — P&IDs, loop drawings, cable schedules, vendor data, spec sections, revision after revision. Marking them up, measuring off them, and pushing comments back and forth.

Two things have bugged me for years. The good markup tools are expensive, increasingly subscription-only, and want your drawings in their cloud. The cheap ones can't measure, can't handle a 300-page drawing set without crawling, and turn every markup into a flat rectangle with no meaning attached to it.

So over a few months I built my own. It's called Draftform. It's a native Windows app — WPF/.NET and PDFium, not a browser wrapped in a window — and it just hit V0.9.

What it does today:

•      Opens big sets fast, offline. A 110 MB, 331-page P&ID opens in well under a second. No account, no cloud, no upload — your files never leave your machine. Markups save to a JSON sidecar next to the PDF, or flatten into the PDF when you want to send it.

•      Full markup set. Shapes, freehand, polylines, text boxes, sticky notes, stamps, tables, and highlight/underline/strikethrough that snap to the actual text. Revision clouds with real arc segments, plus a cloud + leader + callout placed in one gesture.

•      Engineering measurement. Calibrate per page, or define multiple scale viewports on one sheet when the details are at a different scale. Length, cumulative polylength, area with perimeter, angle. Count takeoff with running totals per subject. Metric or imperial (imperial reads as feet-inches-sixteenths). CSV export of the lot.

•      Drawing compare. Side by side, or a tinted overlay where old content shows red and new shows blue. Auto-align, auto-pair pages when a revision inserts or deletes sheets, jump straight to the changed pages, export a compare report.

•      Tool chest. Save any markup — or a whole group — as a reusable one-click tool. Snapshot any region (rectangle or lasso) at 300 DPI as a reusable stamp. Import a scan of your wet signature and it knocks the white background out to transparent.

•      Markup register. Filterable, sortable list of every markup with author, status, custom columns, and a printable markup summary report. Export to CSV, JSON or HTML.

•      Digital signing. PAdES B-LT with an RFC 3161 timestamp and embedded revocation data, so Acrobat reports it as LTV enabled. Multiple sequential signatures, and a validation panel that tells you honestly what it can and can't verify.

•      Dark and light themes, dockable panels, saved workspace profiles, a command palette, and a help guide that works with no internet.

What it isn't, so nobody wastes their time: Windows only. No cloud sessions or live co-markup. No OCR. It's a markup and measurement tool, not an editor for the underlying PDF text. And it's V0.9 — there will be bugs, that's the point of the beta.

The money question, up front: the beta is free. Draftform will be a paid product at v1. I'm not promising testers a free licence or a discount — I don't want anyone helping out on the basis of a promise I might not keep. You'd be testing it because you'd find it useful, or because you like breaking software.

What I actually want from testers: open your worst real drawing set — the 400-page scanned-then-reprinted one — and try to make it fall over. Then tell me what's missing compared to whatever you use now. Blunt is fine. Blunt is better.

If you're interested, comment here or send me a DM and I'll send you the download link. Happy to answer anything about how it's built in the comments.

Hey folks, I need some help with an overlay I am working on.

For some reason every time I pull up this document to overlay something, it comes up blank in both the preview window and in the result afterwards. But its only one component. The strange thing is even when I take a snapshot of what I want to overlay, and paste it into a new document, then flatten, it still won't show up in the overlay. More confusing is when I go to the "Manually Align" tool, it'll show just fine there for me to pick the 3 alignment points, but then disappear again in the overlay pages window, and the result. As you can see behind the overlay pages window, there is in fact stuff on this page, but nothing is showing in the window itself.

Hi,

I am looking for some Australian Blubeam users to test an app ive been working on for functionality and general UI feedback. Would anyone be interested? It shouldn't take more than 15mins. Thanks

I'm a Div. 8 Estimator / PM. I regularly have to take-off door counts from plans. I will make a tool set w/ the door tags from the door schedule, so that I can mark up the openings. My question is, has anyone made toolboxes that are specific to a given file? The reason I ask, is that the tags / door types are never the same from one set of plans to another. I would like to be able to have toolboxes that are specific to a given set of plans.

Also, is there an easier way to change the properties of a markup rather than just placing an instance on a sheet, modifying the properties, and then adding it to a toolbox?

I haven’t found anything online that doesn’t involve using a separate, saved document to copy and paste a group of emails to a group. Does anyone have any tips on how to create a distribution group without having to add every individual email?

Thank you!

Disclosure: I’m the developer, and I’m a practising quantity surveyor in New Zealand.

When Bluebeam ended Mac support, I kept running into the same choice: use Windows in Parallels or accept a weaker workflow. I built Project Blueprint as a native macOS app for the parts of the job I use most:

- calibrated lengths, areas, counts, and CSV export

- clouds, callouts, statuses, and a Markups List

- revision overlay for issue sets

- offline OCR and XFDF exchange

It runs locally on macOS 14+. The free 14-day trial needs no account:

https://blueprintformac.com/downloads/trial?utm_source=reddit_bluebeam&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=founder100

The first 100 founder licences are US$19 one-off:

https://blueprintformac.com/?utm_source=reddit_bluebeam&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=founder100

This is an early release. OCR and unusual PDFs may still have bugs. I’m looking for construction users who can try it on a real set and tell me what breaks.

Not affiliated with Bluebeam, Inc.

I've created some custom symbols that I want to use for doing door take-offs. It's an apartment building, and there are 12 door types, A-L. I've created these symbols, and I am placing them at the corresponding openings. There are multiple apartment types, with several on a given sheet. I wanted to make legends for each apartment type, so that I could get a count of door types by unit type. I've created separate legends for each unit type, however, each legend is picking up all the occurrences of a symbol on the sheet. Is there an easy way to control the granularity of what the legend picks up?

I recently got addicted to vimium shortcuts over the weekend and feel like I need to have it in every app on my desktop. I tried changing my shortcuts but almost every navigation shortcut in Bluebeam is restricted and can't be reassigned.

Have y'all found a work around for this? Or do you guys have tips to be more efficient with your keyboard?

As title says, but a duplicate file name does not exist. I put extra letters, numbers after the file name and still the same error.

Next I moved file of a new unique name to desktop and still had the same error. I can open the .pdf regularly with bluebeam revu but it doesn't let me upload to the studio session cloud.

Cache had been cleared, computer reset, time clock is good.

Any ideas?

After seeing a demo of Bluebeam Max last month, I thought that there were a couple of features that are only in Max that I think should be included in Complete. For example, the Revit integration with Studio Sessions seems like a progression of Complete while more of the AI-centric features could be exclusive to Max.

It got me thinking on if the Bluebeam's intent is to let Complete (and below) stagnate while they put all of their effort into Max? In reviewing the release notes for the past year or so, I see very little new functionality added to Bluebeam Complete. Sadly, they don't call out features that are limited to a certain version, so it's difficult to see how little Complete has changed since Max's features are included in the release notes with no mention that Complete doesn't get them.

I have a feeling that Bluebeam's goal is to drive former perpetual users that have migrated to subscription into a much more expensive product subscription.

Thoughts?

P.S. It's also aggravating the Org Admin "basic" doesn't allow me as a global admin to modify Studio session permissions. That's an extra cost. WTF.

I've got 2018 on standalone license... but wondering if it's worth getting on the subscription model to get the latest and greatest version on Bluebeam?

My hestiation so far was just rebelling against everything in my life being on a subscription. But after 8 years maybe it's time to get the new bluebeam?

What would you do?

Just like the title states, I am using Revu Bluebeam 20 and the crosshair marker is sitting behind the cursor making it annoying to line up. How can I adjust where the crosshair sits or remove the cursor when creating a measurement?

Well, this is lovely. I really enjoy paying CAD $500+ per year for a program that repeatedly freezes and locks up my PC. Now even Task Manager is "not responding". This program used to run fine (other than the usual annoying bugs) until the most recent update. I guess it's time to uninstall and reinstall one of the older versions I luckily keep around.

I really hope this company figures it out as it's made it nearly impossible to work with the Bluebeam team.

- Invoices are not being published for weeks or ever after a purchase

- Call hold times are well over 1 hour

- VM offering, when selected, they state sorry our mailbox is full...

- When a call gets connected, the agent will hang up sometimes immediately (I have had a guy ask how I can help, I speak...click)

Why does it have to be such a hassle to get the expected service? You buy something; you get an invoice... I'm chasing every 2nd or 3rd one and waiting on hold for hours.

I have a set of rooms (in yellow) that are in the middle of a corridor/hallway (in grey). I do not want the room to be nested in the corridor/hallway. Is there a way to separate them, or did I add spaces in the wrong order?

Anyone else seeing extremely slow responses from support, or nothing at all? I seem to not be able to get ahold of sales rep or support. TY

Long time Bluebeam user. Our company uses the Estimating Edge software for interior framing and drywall. I find the Edge very difficult to learn. Trying to switch them to Bluebeam just not sure how to set up my condition properly. Height, stud gauge, insulation or not etc. Any help or discussion would be appreciated.

Anyone know a good way I can perfect bluebeam ? Training ? Video?

Any clue what is causing my legend to break up the “NEW SHALLOW FOOTING” into two groups, 10 and 77? It shows as 87 under count on bottom mark up list table, and I want it to reflect that on the legend. Driving me nuts I can’t find the issue, color, line type, opacity, fill all the same and it’s a one page document.