Protected PDF and take offs?

I did a search and did not find anything. I am trying to get my company to switch for prints and highlighters to BlueBeam and doing take off. The first job is an airport distribution facility and all the PDF's plans are protected. All markup on the right is greyed out and I cannot paste out count symbols on devices to get a count of devices for the take off.

How can I get these plans to be able to take them off in Bluebeam? I tried plotting them in PDF from Adobe and Bluebeam and they are so granulated you loose legibility. Bluebeam just says secure docs can't be printed to PDF printers

Using Revu Extreme 2017, for now.

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Comments

David Cutler

The simplest solution @Archeryrob, if you haven't already tried, is to request unlocked PDFs from the client… 😎

David Cutler

If the simplest solution doesn't work, try this one originally provided by @James Schmidt

https://community.bluebeam.com/discussion/comment/2023#Comment_2023

Shaya Birnbaum

@Archeryrob, if you cannot get unlocked PDFs, your best options are to unlock it using one of the options listed here:

https://community.bluebeam.com/discussion/4391/locked-file-issues-me-too

Archeryrob

That did not work.

Archeryrob

Bid job and client is an electrical, working for a GC and Elec engineer did this and won't release unprotected drawings

Archeryrob

Chrome was locking up on me. The original drawings set is 216 pages and I only need 14. It just spins and never prints. I was able to get Adobe to print the 4 pages and make it useable. It was slightly degraded, but useable.

David Cutler

That's frustrating @Archeryrob - to say the least!

Any support from the GC on the request? They are going to be fighting this battle through the entire project…

David Cutler

@Archeryrob will Revu allow you to extract the 14 pages? If so, perhaps Chrome won't choke on a smaller bite.

Archeryrob

The protection doesn't seem to allow any alterations. I can usually delete the pages, or drawings, I do not need in the take off file I save. .

Archeryrob

Overbid it, you said? :)

David Cutler

I've seen this software recommended, but haven't tried it myself:

https://www.pdfchamp.com/

Might be worth looking into. 😎

Doug McLean

You can also try this.
Open the Thumbnails panel (looks like 4 squares), Rt. Click on any thumbnail and see what isn't greyed out.

If Extract pages isn't greyed out, you're in luck. Simply Extract all the pages as Individual files and you'll be fine.
You can then just select the 14 files that you need and put them together in one file.

If you can't do this, you'll have to get a bit extreme.

Do not let this deter you however, this is not a Bluebeam problem. Its a Architect problem. Signatures and Seals are a thing, but they need to be removed for the subtrades to work from.
Revu is EXCELLENT at doing takeoffs, much better than OST or Planswift, and definitely better than paper and highlighters. In this case, its the drawings that are messed up, not the software.

David Cutler

One last suggestion @Archeryrob

If all else fails see if you can capture a snapshot of the entire page and then past that image to a fresh page.