🗓️ August 2025 Challenge - One Tool, Many Uses!

Hi everyone!

Welcome to our August Monthly Challenge – One Tool, Many Uses!

This month, we’re highlighting the versatility of Bluebeam Revu. Some tools may seem simple on the surface, but with a little creativity they can become essential to multiple parts of your workflow. Have a tool you’ve adapted in unexpected ways? This is your chance to show how you’ve stretched the use of a single feature.

Your experience could inspire someone else to rethink how they use the tools they already know!

Monthly Challenge- One Tool Many Uses.svg

📝 How to Participate

Pick one Bluebeam Revu tool you use for multiple jobs or workflows. Whether by repurposing it, applying it creatively, or discovering a time-saving trick. How have you made the most of it?

🤝 Share: Post a screenshot, description, or short explanation of the tool and the different ways you use it.

💬 Discuss: Check out and comment on how others are putting their tools to work!

🏅 Rewards

All participants will earn a unique challenge badge and points to rank up in the community and increase your chances at becoming the leaderboard winner!

📚 Resources

https://www.youtube.com/%40BluebeamInc/videos

Bluebeam University

Let’s see how far a single tool can go! Share your versatile favorite below and explore what others are doing too! 🧰

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Comments

Vince French

So this may be a little off track to what the original question was asking but, this is the type of thing that you can create if you use a combination of Revu and Power Query in Excel.

When measuring an external wall, you start off with a simple area shape for a window or a door.

But an area for a window when you're a bricklayer is pretty meaningless! However, with Revu you get a few more details in the Markup List: -

We can then combine this with a table in Excel which looks like this - you will see the Subject from Revu matches a header in the Excel table: -

Power Query combines the two and you can work out all sorts of things such as: -

There is one markup so that is 1no dummy frame or window former
The lintel - with a few calculations using the figures in the blue cells of the external tables you can add the bearings and then round up to the next full lintel length.
The length of the cavity tray above the window and the number of weep vents required.
The total length of bed reinforcement required above and below the window.
What special works, if any, are required to the window reveals.
The type and length of cavity closure required.
If you've allocated the markup to a specific brickwork lift (see the Markup List) then this can be used in your spreadsheet too to break the works down into actual work zones.

And much much more if you require that information.

So, one markup, which is normally a single click of a button as you'll be filling in a cut out, will produce a considerable amount of data.

Marco M

Not at all off track. Thanks for sharing this!

Doug McLean

I'm going to send you my slide deck from Unbound after the conference, you should see the crazy things I'm doing in PQ now.
Its true though, once you combine the two programs, you can do some really amazing things.

Vince French

Look forward to seeing that Doug!

Jes Stafford

Seems like there could be a whole webinar devoted to Power Query, with this and the other power users' examples I have seen here in the community. Guess I will miss that at Unbound, with @Doug McLean 's slide deck. Next year!

Vince French

This is a quick video of the above workflow in action

There is also a longer version on the YouTube page which basically a 'replay' of the presentation that I did at the London BUG last year.

https://youtu.be/LRWPwb7ic6g

Isaac.Harned

Probably a few people doing something similar, and we are using Revu at a much smaller scale than most, but here is probably the biggest time saver I have put in practice so far:

Export submitted & scheduled Terminal Unit Performance (normally hours of manual input to our forms) as excel chart
Paste values onto a preset template that gathers submittal and schedule, runs preset comparisons, highlights mismatches, calculates FPM, etc
Unfreeze xlookup formulas (frozen on the master form to facilitate dropping into other books, just a # in front of the formula) with a VBA macro
Now typing in terminal unt tag will pull info such as setpoints, coil data, sizing into the relevant sheet
Remove Xlookups from entire book with VBA Macro and replace with values. Now it is just values in named cells and usable for other macros that total or move data between sheets.

David Cutler

That's mind blowing @Isaac.Harned! The time savings from not having to manually enter everything must be amazing - never mind the quality control aspect of all of the manual data entry. Nice work!😎

Jes Stafford

Here is a simple one… in sharp contrast to the power users above.

Sometimes I need to work over a scanned drawing that comes in with a lot of "noise" around the drawn lines, sometimes notes scratched in the margins.

To clean that stuff up, I saved a pen tool set to white with a 10.00 pt size. It acts like an eraser. Adjust the size to work into finer corners or switch to drawing a big white rectangle to clean up large spaces.

Paul Rudwick, PBOT

Similar to this one, the "erase content" is a really helpful tool (although it's more permanent)