🗓️ October 2025 Challenge - Creepy Clutter Cleanup!

Hi everyone!

This Halloween, we’re tackling something that can be just as scary as ghosts and goblins—cluttered documents, messy markups, and disorganized projects! 👻

This month’s challenge is Creepy Clutter Cleanup! We want to see how you clear the cobwebs out of your Bluebeam Revu projects. Do you have tricks for removing unnecessary markups, cleaning up drawings, or keeping your Tool Chest tidy? How have you polished a chaotic file? Your cleanup strategies can help others banish the mess for good!

Monthly Challenge- Creepy Clutter Cleanup.svg

📝 How to Participate

🤝 Share how you clean up and organize in Bluebeam Revu. Do you declutter markups or layers to make drawings easier to read? Do you use cleanup tools or batch features to streamline messy projects?

💬 Discuss or post screenshots, examples, or a description of your cleanup process and explain the benefits such as smoother reviews, faster navigation, or fewer mistakes.

🏅 Rewards

All participants will earn a unique challenge badge and points to level up in the community!

📚 Resources

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

How to Edit PDF Content

Markup Tools How-to Videos

Drawing Management How-to Videos

Let’s exorcise the clutter and bring some order to our haunted files. Share your tips below and help the community stay clutter-free this spooky season! 🕸️

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Comments

Vince French

First thing that I do when I get drawings is to check for those pesky Autocad SXT markups which can be selected but not worked with as they are protected. I have a button which flattens all of those markups.
I then look at the content on the drawing to see how cluttered it is and therefore how difficult it will be to start measuring. If it's okay then great I'll get measurring however, if there's just too much info to be able to easily move around the screen, I'll then look at turning off some layers and saving that as a new "Cleaned" layer.

So this: -

Becomes this before I start measuring: -

I'll also do this sort of thing when I'm stitching drawings together as although drawings might overlap, quite often title blocks, legends, etc. are often placed in the overlapping areas.

Another use might be for when I want to create a ticksheet for when I go out on site in which case, this

becomes this: -

Working with drawings becomes so much easier when the irrelevant information has been removed.

Shaya Birnbaum

The first thing I do is flatten the drawings to remove anything in the Markup List that isn’t mine (usually items that carried over from the CAD program).

I then rename the drawings so they fit my workflow and are easier to navigate.

Next I reduce the file size so the set takes up less space and loads faster.

Finally I sometimes remove the layers that came in with the drawings but only if they are excessive and I don’t see a future use for them.

Keeping files clean this way makes them easier to review, speeds up navigation, and prevents confusion down the road.

Rebecca Yu

In addition to the workflows mentioned above, I will also get rid of any Untitled Viewports that like to get exported from CAD programs. Once they are gone, then I can apply appropriate calibrations per sheet, creating scaled viewports where needed.

Doug McLean

Well, where's the checkbox for All of the Above?

My go to is to work in Individual Pages. I just find it easier all around. In order to do that though, its much easier to do a few things to the combined documents before you break them apart. In no particular order…

Set Scales
1. I like to use the Search feature, combined with a Highlight tool to set my scales.
2. This is easier to do when the drawings are combined as you can apply a scale to multiple pages
Apply Custom Columns
1. MUCH MUCH easier to do as combined file
2. doable with a Script, but a bit of a PITA
Page labels
Hyperlink
We apply a custom Header with the Drawing package
1. Optional
Spaces
1. Best done when as a collective because you can copy/ paste a Space and keep its attributes.
Break the file into Individual Sheets (this does have to be last)

Lastly I prefer to create a Set. Not only do I find this easier to work with, it also makes Slip Sheeting easier and doesn't make your drawing package overly large. Yes there are some different workflows you have to take into consideration when doing a Summary Export but those are minor when compared to file size, especially when working on a VPN or in the cloud.

Other than that, every drawing package is different and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
Notice I don't set Bookmarks. with individual sheets Bookmarks are pretty much useless, so I tend to ignore them. When I do use them though, I do them either 3rd or 4th.

Darbie Roach

I will be learning to use all of the above!

But for me, these are my go to steps.

Flatten anything from civil or CAD on opening.
Page labels and Bookmarks are a must for all files with more than one page.
And lastly but simply, I heavily use color coding for all my markups and gently encourage my consultants to do so as well. When I open a new file I will hide or delete anything I don't want to see straight from the filter list by color. I've found that many of our consultants have their own custom status workflow, and this allows for coordination on smaller quicker jobs without having to be strict about status. The colors align to our firms standard of status, so on longer projects we do enforce the WRA standard for list filtering.

Josh Gebelein

I have commented previously on a need for Bluebeam to allow custom scripts to be set which will run through multiple cleanup operations for a pdf, either one file at a time or as a batch process. You'll see from the posts on this page that the steps described vary by user need, and can be very tedious.

So I'm going to post about another commonly overlooked cleanup problem - shared Profiles (.bpx). When users share a profile, they typically do not realize how much information in encapsulates. Profiles often include personal information and/or proprietary customization data. There are also settings that could be used to remove security settings and install automated scripts which could be malicious. Personally I find it unnerving how casually these files are shared, and how much is packed into them. Here is what I have written in our company guide about it:

Checking & Cleaning a Profile for Sharing

Profiles can be exported, and if the “include dependencies” box is checked (which it is by default) then the exported .bpx file will be enlarged to contain resource data such as toolsets, hatch patterns and linetypes. This is useful for saving / backing up / or sending in one neat container file all of the files used with a profile. Be sure to uncheck the “include dependencies” box if you don’t intend to share these things.

Bluebeam Profiles are saved with a file extension of .bpx and it is an XML file. You can open it with any text editor such as WordPad, or a script editor such as Notepad++.

You can edit or delete items in a profile one of two ways:
1. Within Bluebeam going to various locations and changing/deleting settings. Profile data is broadly scattered throughout the program, so this is not convenient and it is easy to overlook items.
2. Using an XML editor, you can view, edit and delete entire sets of data or individual entries.
The most common elements in a profile that should be purged or cleaned if not intended to be shared are custom/personal settings for:
1. Hatch patterns – record key “HatchSetManager”
2. Header and footer settings – record key “HeaderFooter”
3. Linetypes – record key “LineSetManager”
4. Markup columns – record key “MarkupList” and “StateModels”
5. Tool sets – record key “ToolSetManager”
The way the Bluebeam program is displayed, toolbars arranged, and other user interface settings are contained in the following. Removing these will avoid rearranging the next user’s interface:
1. Record key “Redline”
2. Record key “DockContainer”
Other elements to consider checking are (usually less used):
1. Bookmark templates – record key “BookmarkTemplates”
2. Document comparison settings – record key “ComparisonSettings”
3. Presets for reduce file size tool – record key “ReduceFileSizeOptions”
4. Custom layers – record key “Layers”
5. Custom javascript – record key “Script”

Example view of a profile using Notepad++, an XML editor. In this view the record keys are collapsed, and can be expanded to see the content. If you wanted to clean out data before sending, you could select entire record keys and delete them, or open the record and edit entries within.

Vince French

Very interesting @Josh Gebelein !

Margaret Collins

Many of these have been mentioned before but my process is:

keep a copy of the "original" file, & make a "working file" version
unflatten (sometimes reveals hidden markups)
re-flatten hidden markups & any AutoCAD ones
check if text searchable (Ctrl-Shift-A) & save another copy to OCR if necessary
open a one page template I have with desired layers & custom columns, append the document pages & save
remove the blank page, save again
create another "reduced" copy of the document & run reduce
compare the reduced copy to the original & make sure there are no differences (sometimes there are issues)
add labels & bookmarks

If there are too many differences, sometimes I’ll “print” the original document (the page size needs to match) and process that copy instead.

David Cutler

One step I've added to my processes recently is ensuring all layers are turned on in the "Default Layer Configuration".

I've only seen the issue once where a few layers were turned of in the Default Layer Configuration, but it left a mark on that project that makes it a tough one to forget.

Marco M

Last week to participate in this month's challenge!

Marco M

This Challenge is now closed.

Thanks all for participating! It was great to see so many good and helpful tips.

Stay tuned for the next Challenge early November! 😉