We're looking to invest in some estimating software and was just wondering whether Bluebeam is capable of doing what Planswift does
I use Bluebeam because I can easily manipulate drawings, customise markups to clearly detail what has been measured, add custom columns so my markups can be allocated to sections of work, etc.. I looked at several other packages but none of them offered me the flexibility that I needed to create different workflows for different trades.
@Peter Jury, I had a similar question on comparisons because PlanSwift is much more intuitive but the things required by Bluebeam to do takeoffs are hidden in tabs and tables where in PlanSwift I could make folders to store all my QTO takeoffs and the legends were much easier to customize.
What did you end up learning?
I don't use it for estimates but if that's a focus of your workflow, I would think you could make a custom profile where the tools you need are set to be easier to find. From custom Tool Sets to custom toolbars.
I have different profiles for measuring different trades - I even have several profiles just for measuring groundworks including foundations, external works, retaining walls, drainage, etc..
This is because not only do I only need certain tools for each workflow but I also have custom columns which collect specific information which I need in order to complete my tenders.
My tools are easily accessible but also many of them automatically generate the information for custom columns e.g. a sewer run from an internal SVP (foul drainage) will self populate with the fact that it starts with an SVP, it will be 100mm diameter pipe and in UPVC and the trench will have as dug back fill. For this item all I will need to do is enter the details of where it ends such as a manhole or joining onto another drainage run.
That sounds impressive @vfrench maybe you should make a how-to video.
Hi @Luke Shiras
This is a link to a video where I demonstrate the drainage workflow. You'll see as I am marking up much of the information required in the custom columns is prepopulated leaving the absolute minimum of manual input where there are 'variables'.
There are also a few 'bonus' bits in here such as exporting to Excel, copying markups from one scale to another, using the lasoo tool, etc..
Very nice, @vfrench!
Most of that went over my head but I could see how useful it was, @vfrench. Thanks for sharing.
Hey guys, my name is sam, fairly new user. I was sent a set of pdf's that are scale protected, so blue beam will not work is there a way to unlock these at my end or do I need to reach out to the engineers to unlock? thanks
There is a black line that appears when converting from PDF to TIFF. It normally blacks out the title block but have had it black out parts of drawings recently. Is there any way to prevent this black line?
This might be a really obvious one but I can't seem to figure out the best way to do this: I frequently mark up drawing sets for estimates wherein there are multiple pass-through trades under my scope. What I want to do is to be able to do takeoffs for multiple trades, giving them each their own layer that represents them,…
Need help with my cursor and measuring tools. My cursor will only go in a straight line in the measuring tool I am unable to follow a radius or use the measuring tool correctly, it will not follow the cursor but only go in straight lines.
Last night, our Admin team nearly lost their minds. While converting 92 Word documents to PDF, they discovered that the new PDFs were displaying the old versions of the Word documents. Any ideas what caused this and how to prevent or correct the problem if it happens again? They converted perfectly this morning.
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Hi. Is anyone experiencing their toolsets randomly removing the first item in the list and replacing it with another? For example, I can open a set and the first one in the list should be say a 3-pole plug, followed by a 4-pole, 5-pole etc. but for some reason the 3-pole plug has been replaced by something random from a…
I have noticed when saving a file as PDF from Word the are sometime several bookmarks listed as "1". Bookmarks are created using Word headers, but there are never any headers named "1". Does anyone know why this happens and how to prevent it?
Is there a way to add together measurements between multiple pages? Say I markup a ton of items as MTL-2 over many pages; is there a way to add them all together? Like the legend below but for all pages with MTL-2
Just did the update this morning. Everything went well except I no longer have the Revu icon. It is just looks like a piece of paper with the right, top corner bent over. Is this the new icon or did something not load correctly?
