What feature/tool could you talk about for hours?

eperius · 2025-06-26T18:30:05+00:00

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eperius

What's one Bluebeam Revu feature or tool you could talk for hours about?

Let's get a ton of comments going so we can have a Bluebeam Feature Show & Tell at our next USBUG meeting!

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Comments

Josh Gebelein

I use Bluebeam to do all conceptual drawings and markups. I can 'draft' an entire structural set in a few days, and put out a professional product that later takes my team more than a month to produce anything comparable using Revit. All you need are tools that have the same settings, blocks, patterns as your typical CAD/BIM standards, some background pdf files from other disciplines. Here are some examples:

Using Bluebeam for concept work and sketches is something I preach about endlessly. The time savings is immense for things that are dynamic and changing. It's easy to drop these into a session and collaborate in real time.

vfrench

This is tough as so many things are interlinked however, I'll say Custom Tools and more specifically the data that you can automatically collect in Markup List which can then be exported out to a csv file.
Using a combination of custom tools, columns and an Excel spreadsheet I have created workflows which make the process of tendering works not only very accurate but also extremely fast to use generally.

Creating Custom Tools correctly can really make a huge difference to productivity.

Doug McLean

For hours, Measurements.

For me, the key to understanding how to create custom tools begins with understanding how the various measurement tools function. There are so many nuances to how to use the various measurement tools that I could easily do a whole webinar on it.

What are the primary measurements that you get from each tool, what are the secondary?
What are the differences between a Perimeter and a Polylength tool?
How does the markups list read a measurement?
What happens when you right click?
What else can you add to a Count tool?

The list is kind of endless.

Luke Shiras

One of my previous bosses was convinced she could draft a whole project in Bluebeam as fast as we could in Revit. For the most part, I would agree, but one thing Revit has going for it is revealing the hidden problems. Like where a roof interacts with an awkward wall intersection or where ceilings and windows overlap.

But with the right toolsets, you can draft pretty much anything you need quickly and accurately.

Liz Larsen

USING CUSTOM STATUSES IN STUDIO SESSIONS.

Not everyone does this and it's literally painful to collaborate in Sessions that don't have Custom Statuses.

I will gladly point people in the right direction if anyone needs help getting started with this. I think the entire industry needs to know about and implement it.

vfrench

Hi Liz,
I never use Sessions but would be very glad to learn if you can start pointing…..

Luke Shiras

Try using this how-to guide I created for my office. It walks you through all the key steps.

https://community.bluebeam.com/discussion/4465/how-to-studio-sessions

vfrench

Thanks Luke!

Josh Gebelein

I agree that using custom statuses is a wonderful tool. Getting people to remember to add them to the pdf before posting files to a session is next to impossible though. Bluebeam Devs really need to allow the Session owners to control this universally for all docs in a session.

Doug McLean

yup, she can.
With great gusto too.