Feature Highlight: Flatten tool

Marco M
Marco M Posts: 152
edited November 22 in Peer Support

This week, we're highlighting the Flatten tool in Revu! Flattening lets you lock in your markups, making them a permanent part of your PDF. It’s a great way to finalize documents and ensure that all annotations are secure before sharing.

  • Do you or your team use the Flatten feature in Revu?
  • What benefits have you experienced from flattening documents before distribution?

Share your thoughts on making markups stick and how it could help with your projects.

https://blog.bluebeam.com/flattening-documents-bluebeam-revu/

https://support.bluebeam.com/en-us/revu/features/locking-vs-flattening-markups.html | https://support.bluebeam.com/online-help/revu20/Content/RevuHelp/Menus/Document/Flatten/Flatten-Markups--MT.htm

Comments

  • We use the flatten tool all the time. What I haven't figured out is when to "Allow Markup Recovery".

  • We flatten all markups on reviewed submittals before returning to the contractor. I believe we usually check the Allow Markup Recovery option.

    Otherwise, for collaboration and especially sessions, we leave the markups as unflattened. This lets us use the markups list to organize and coordinate work on revisions.

    ~j

  • Carina
    Carina Posts: 47

    I would love to know if there is a way to flatten markups from a Studio Session (specifically when using the Newforma + Bluebeam Studio integration). Right now… when using this integration, PDFs will get shared back to GCs with unflattened PDFs 😱

  • @Carina Are you sharing these files as part of the Session? You know Collaboration is the name of the game in BB Sessions where flattened markups are more FOR THE RECORD. If you end the session or SAVE AS that document out of Session before sharing, the "Session archive" PDFs could be shared after hitting FLATTEN.

    It has been a minute since I used the Newforma integration, but I suspect that is has a way to break the PDF you intend to share out of the BB Session. That will open up all kinds of functionality, including flatten. Timing is everything with that operation.

    ~j

  • Carina
    Carina Posts: 47

    @Jes Stafford Less "in the Session" need. My question was really more for the Newforma + Bluebeam Studio integration side. I know there is a way in Newforma to default PDFs to be flattened before closing and sending back RFIs & Submittals…. but I would like to see if this could be a setting done inside of Bluebeam as that Session closes.