Feature Highlight: Flatten tool

Marco M

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://youtu.be/K8mdmDW4-j8?feature=shared

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

Luke Shiras

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

Jes Stafford

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.

Carina

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 😱

Jes Stafford

@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.

Carina

@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.

michael miller

Responding to @Luke Shiras: I occasionally use 'Allow Markup Recovery' when sending a PDF with markups when my interest in flattening is primarily to provide a 'fixed' version of markups, i.e. avoid accidental changes, yet it's fine if they do want to go in and make edits. This is often the case if most of the people receiving it will only care about reviewing the document, but one or two may have the interest and knowledge to try out revisions to the markups (perhaps in the context of markups as proposed edits to a drawing).

michael miller

People using the Flatten tool may want to be aware of what seems like a potentially serious bug. See my post:

https://community.bluebeam.com/bluebeam-community/discussion/4635/flatten-w-o-markup-recovery-has-a-bug-or-bad-feature-choice