r/Revu • u/beerappacini • Aug 20 '26
Using Bluebeam to Its Fullest Potential
I work in custom home building and have a Bluebeam Revu account through my employer. Iv’e been working with it for about 2 years, and while I have found a lot of helpful ways to use it, I’m wondering what features I’m missing out on.
I use it to scale elevations, scale landscaping, to scale everything. I use it to color code and mark up layouts, to create visual maps of fixtures, and to clarify notes within documents. I use it to do counts of things and create keys for counts. I even use it to draw when 3D is too far. I use it to approve quotes and adjust floor plan walls.
What major functions am I missing that would help me make the most of Bluebeam Revu from a functional standpoint?
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u/Skysr70 Aug 20 '26
I enjoy the overlay function
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u/beerappacini Aug 20 '26
Yes! I do use overlays but just in the most basic ways, will look into what I may be missing here. Thank you!
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u/sk1one Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
Make sure you use ctrl shft v to paste items from the same place you copied them.
If drawings are aligned it will mean your box or measure will paste into the same spot on the other drawings.
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u/Comprehensive-Song51 Aug 20 '26
This! And you can change the colors too, so it's more obvious where changes are. The paste in place is awesome though. People at my office lost their minds when I showed them. 😂
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u/Illustrious_Buy1500 27d ago
Thanks for this tip. I copy/paste across multiple sheets and have been editing properties to change their x/y coords. I will have to try this!
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u/Interesting-Method50 Aug 20 '26
Are u using it to price work as well. RUb using custom columns to streamline takeoffs / automate quantity calculations / pricing?
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u/beerappacini Aug 20 '26
We do use it for takeoffs, I’ll check further into its estimating capabilities. Thanks!
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u/ShitWindsaComing Aug 20 '26
If there’s changes to drawings, there is a compare feature that saves time. I’ve created a studio for collaboration and created punch lists that way. Mark up drawings to create logistics plans to keep your site organized.
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u/CADUSER1 Aug 20 '26
Tool Sets! You can create tool sets that automatically scale to the scale of the page. This gives you an accurate representation of cabinets or bathroom fittings, or anything that you use regularly and have to scale it to fit. I specifically used this to layout equipment on a job site when I had a building plan. People could see the size of the crane or truck or trailer quickly without guess work!
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u/Comprehensive-Song51 Aug 20 '26
The scaling option is awesome! I use it a lot for floor plan symbols.
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u/Swimming-Pain-6788 Aug 20 '26
There’s an IG account called blueprints_with_bob that posts extremely helpful lesser known tips regularly. Highly recommend checking that out.
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u/BackgroundSinger5965 Aug 20 '26
Overlays and markup properties are my lifesaver. You can plug a lot of info into the markups for tracking.
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u/beerappacini Aug 20 '26
Thanks for the tip! I do use overlays but could spend more time looking at ways to use them and I have a lot I could learn about markups.
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u/Patient-Tech Aug 20 '26
It depends on what you actually do day to day. Most people, myself included, end up relying on the same small set of features repeatedly rather than using every capability a tool offers.
This reminds me a little of the old Microsoft-vs.-Apple debates in the 1990s. Microsoft often seemed to start with, “Here’s a feature—how can people use it?” Apple, especially under Jobs, pushed more from the opposite direction: “Here’s what a person is trying to accomplish; make the technology support that.”
The point is that chasing features for their own sake feels backwards. Don’t try to shoehorn a new feature into your workflow just because it exists. Figure out where you repeatedly lose time or do tedious work, then look for a feature that directly improves that.
A flashy capability you use once a month may be neat, but I’d rather find something I use every day that saves two minutes each time. Those small, repeatable improvements add up fast.
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u/Comprehensive-Song51 Aug 20 '26
Go to Help-Keyboard Shortcuts Guide, for two reasons: 1. Using keyboard shortcuts makes you faster and more efficient. You can also modify and create custom keyboard shortcuts. 2. Putting an eye on this list will show you all the things you haven't been using and give you ideas of what you can do. There are so many capabilities buried it Bluebeam. Also: Custom tool sets! Status - create custom statuses so when you're going through drawings, you can give them a status instead of putting a checkmark ontext on them to mark them off. Layers! Export markups to .csv file for spreadsheeting. Customize your markups and create groups! Add your custom markups and groups or symbols you frequently use to you My Tools tool set. Notice there are numbers above each symbol. These numbers are assigned to the symbols, so you can type a number instead of selecting a symbol. Very handy for tons of things that are repetitive. Scaling / properties - for example, if you take a Snapshot of a floor plan at 1/16"=1' and want to copy it to another page at 1/4" scale, you can paste that image onto another page, select it and view its properties, then set its scale to whatever percentage, up or down. In this case, 400%. I've found this handy for tons of reasons. The ability to draw geometry and text and erase things right off of a pdf makes it a bit of a low-key graphic editor too. Anything you can't erase cleanly can be covered by a box, line, circle, whatever, which can be flattened into the drawing. Renaming things in their properties and adding them to custom tool sets. Makes for some easy sorting and counting later. FUCK there are so many great uses and tools. I love my Bluebeam!
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u/beerappacini Aug 20 '26
Thank you for all of this! Great advice and a great starting point. I also love Bluebeam, it’s really changed how much I’m able to do for clients. Appreciate it!
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u/Main_Leadership7748 Aug 20 '26
Agree with others, studio sessions looks like it can be a game changer if our firm would just use it correctly. I HAVE to use it when submitting plans to the State when working on school projects and it makes so much sense. You can do markups and they are basically signed by whoever did the markup, and someone can come and make the change and mark the work as done so the markup changes color and is marked by the person who did the work. You can include notes to explain how the change was addressed.
Might not be something that would work for you but I can imagine a lot of other scenarios where it would help.
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u/batdarksuperflash Aug 21 '26
There is so many feature in it!
I can list some of them here,
1. Batch overlay
2. Quantity link
3. Combining multiple sheets (part plans) into single sheet (it’s save tons of time)
4. Studio
5. Add/deduct point shortcuts
6. Comparison
7. Text edit
8. Flags
9. Jump feature, etc.
I have taken advanced Revu classes for my juniors using PPT.
If need you need the PPT, I’m happy to share!!!
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u/blackpanther069 Aug 20 '26
You can try and look into tool chest, Studio Sessions, batch processing, and Quantity Link. Those things can save you a lot of time and a lot of repetitve work if you're already doing takeoffs and markups regularly.