Increase Page Extents and Maintain Existing Markups Positions?

Question

Hello Bluebeam Community.

We use Bluebeam to review and mark up drawings, and with a busy drawing, many times snapshots or markups will be added beyond our drawing border (page extents). Unfortunately we've found that objects outside of the page extents cannot be panned over to or zoomed in to if the PDF is viewed in Adobe. Internally we use Bluebeam but we can't control what others use to view our PDFs externally. It also seems that objects outside the page extents are not included when the PDF is printed. That is less of a concern, but also not ideal.

We thought our solution was to simply increase the page extents to encapsulate any objects already added outside of the border, or to the side where more objects would then be added. However, depending on the drawing and how the page extents change, existing markups/snapshots may not move correctly with the drawing. We do not want existing markup content permanently flattened. Flatten will indeed hold things in place for page setup changes, but again, depending on how the extents change, sometimes they will shift back when unflattened.

We can adjust the position of markups/snapshots after changing page extents, and we are not opposed to doing that. But one exception seems to be highlights where "Select Text" was used. These highlights can shift too, but when they are selected afterward (individually or as part of a group) - no X/Y coordinates exist in Properties to be edited. There doesn't appear to be a way to move them back.

I'm including an example drawing. If I want to add 10" blank space at the left to include the objects outside of the border, keep the drawing aligned at the right and end up with all markups in the correct position in relation to the drawing (without flattening), is it even possible? If not, any other suggestions?

Thanks!

EXAMPLE.pdf

Vince French · Answer

I tried with the example that you posted but instead of adding to the left, I added to the right - everything worked without have to change the position of the markups or highlights on the main body of the drawing.  I did have to move the markup on the left which was outside the page area though.

example2.pdf

mk3024 · Answer

Thanks so much for your response. This is exactly the workflow I've been trying to use, but many times I cannot get the results I need. Depending on how you change the page, sometimes it works. Other times, the added markups/images do not shift with the drawing, even though the Page Setup preview looks correct beforehand.

When that happens, I can group or select all and adjust the XY coords in Properties to move them back to the correct position, but the "Select Text" highlights seemingly cannot be moved, individually or as part of a larger group.

If you are willing to try the example I posted, it would be great to know if you can find any way to make it work.

abuell · Answer

* Click on Page Setup, select the file name from the list (select "current" for a single page), and click Next.
* In the Page Setup box, select under Media Size, <Custom Page Size>
* Turn off Autoscale, then modify the dimensions to the size you need.
* Crucial Step: Select "Fit Media" and choose your alignment. Since I needed extra space at the top, I chose "Align Bottom." This modified the page dimensions while keeping the original linework anchored at the bottom.

If any of that is confusing, just experiment with those settings and you’ll see how the anchor points react.