Hello everyone. To day I am posing a question that I hope someone can assist me with.
In short what I want is to know if Bluebeam is capable of opening a File (any type at all) from a CAD program such as Microstation or AutoCad, and recognize a line as an actual line, instead of just as an image (PDF)?
A bit of background:
I work for an Electrical Utility Company within the Engineering department. Our team is responsible for designing the electrical & civil required to install our new facilities throughout the city.
In this work our reference point for most things is the Property line. Most of the custom Line, Polylength & Polyline tools that I have created use the Property line as the reference.
To use the custom tools, I choose one of them and then methodically trace out every Property Line within my new design. Many of the lines I am tracing out have many different segments to them consisting of straight & curved sections. In the process of doing a complete design, I have to use may custom tools and trace around the Property Lines multiple times, this is very time consuming.
This is where I am looking for possible solutions, help, assistance from anyone willing to join the conversation.
Lets start off with what I would like to be able to do, and then see where the conversation leads. So, in a perfect world I would like to be able to have my drafting department send me a file that only has Property Lines, nothing else.
- I would like Bluebeam to be able to recognize these Property Lines as Bluebeam Poly length lines (so that I can later pull length data from them using Quantity Link)
- I want to be able to convert these lines into exact copies of my custom tools. Currently the Format Painter feature only represents the lines visually, however it does not represent them in a way that I am able to use Quantity Length for a take-off.
In being able to process data in this way I would be able to increase my productivity exponentially. In stead of spending hours tracing out lines using multiple tools and I would take the file set to me by my drafting team, I would for example save multiple copies of that file as Utility Right of Way, Trench, Duct …….. Using one of these files, lets say Trench, I would convert the line (recognized by Bluebeam as a Polylength) to represent my custom tool for Trench. Once completed I would export that data and then import the data back into a master drawing that will represent the entire project. I would then do this for each line type that I require for the project.
On a large scale project, I believe I could save days worth of work with this method, however at this time I have been unable to find ways to make Bluebeam work in this way.
I have attached a few images depicting what our engineered product looks like in design, if that helps put some context to what I am doing. I have also added a few pictures showing how I have setup some of my custom tools, so that they will offset from the Property Lines at certain common distances when using a drawing scaled at 1:1000.
I encourage anyone interested in this topic to please join in on the conversation, but please try to keep the conversation contained to what I am try to accomplish, that would be greatly appreciated. I can also add additional clarity to any portion of this question if needed.
Currently we are running Bluebeam Revu x64 Complete
Version 21.2
Bluebeam Engine 21.2.0.1183
Thanks Everyone
