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I learnt a new word recently - 'mentee' - which apparently means one who is being mentored, itself a current buzzword which you will no doubt have noticed frequently. It reared its head in during the release of Bluebeam Revu 2016 via a global webcast, which, instead of focusing on a demonstration of new features, presented three demonstrations from US construction companies; Black & Veatch, Turner Construction, and Sundt and Gensler, which paired AEC mentors with their younger mentees.

Each pair demonstrated new product features and improved workflow solutions, with an interesting touch, I felt, as the mentees proved to be exceeding their brief somewhat by introducing original contributions to the software themselves. The presentations covered three of the main announcements in the latest version; Batch Markup Summary, Legends and Tags.

Bluebeam, of course, is a leading developer of PDF tools for the AEC and oil and gas industries. It has been my preferred PDF application almost since the first release and I’m delighted to see how it has now developed into such a comprehensive and versatile tool for the construction industries.

Batch Markup Summary
With Bluebeam Revu, you can accumulate large amounts of data from multiple PDFs from a project or within single PDFs comprising numerous documents. To simplify the communication and management of this information, Batch Markup Summary can be used to create annotation summaries that report on, or extract data, relevant to different technology teams within the project.

This gives users more control over output, enabling them to create single or multiple reports from information in the Markup lists across multiple PDFs. It is used in conjunction with extensive filters and sort options, and, being customisable, as well, gives users almost limitless options for creating individual and focused reports.

The mentee at Black & Veatch, Jason, took over the presentation to show how he honed the feature to provide enhanced management reports. Starting with a list of markups, categorised by importance, a report template was opened with discipline chosen as the first selection option, adding other selections - subject, name, comments etc. and setting page breaks per level of importance.

Variable-sized thumbnails and hyperlinks were attached, linked directly to each document, and four types of report were set up pertaining to each of four disciplines. The batch was loaded and run after popping the files to be included in the selection window - the result being vastly improved reports coded by discipline and levels of importance.

Legends and Legends for Take-off
The new Legends feature is designed to give users a better understanding of PDF markups. Legends can be customised to show specific information from a drawing, linked to its properties held within a table, and more accessible for take-offs. Symbols can be displayed with basic descriptions or with additional information from the Markups list, including take-off quantities, markup status and more.

As Adam Della Monica of Turner Construction explained, by taking a plan-view of the foundations of a project Bluebeam allows users to add up different elements, such as the pieces of steel cast in with concrete and other components, highlighted with different colours for each markup.

Legends also clarify annotations within PDFs, automatically updating the drawing, and its revision level, as annotations are added, deleted or modified - extended to cover or update properties on multiple legend reference sheets - an improvement over the old way of doing things, which relied on spreadsheets to keep a track of revisions. The versatility of the new Legends feature enables architects, using hyperlinks attached to legends, to keep track of and access individual items in documents hundreds of pages long.

The same capabilities are just as useful for producing accurate punch, or snagging, workflows. Customising levels of detail to be either extensive or minimal enables users to set them up to reflect their specific purpose and then to add them to tools for re-use on other documents, retaining the same automatic updating capability.

Tags
PDFs from any number of sources can be accumulated within sets for easier management, as they can be viewed as single documents within a single tab. Revu 2016 takes that further by enabling users to 'tag' sheets by sheet number, sheet name, drawing date, revision number and other details. Once tagged, the information can be used to create sets, identifying drawing revisions, sheet types, disciplines and categories, using information already found in a document.

Tagged information can even be used in order to generate complete drawing logs from sets, and to export drawing logs as Excel spreadsheets, with the ability to add hyperlinks, and to use standard Excel tools to select and organise columns at will. Looking at tabs, rather than tags, for a minute, Bluebeam has introduced a handy new feature that shows a preview of drawing whenever you hover your mouse over an open document tab. Part of this functionality also allows files to be opened in background mode, while working on another document.

Revit plug-in
The Revit plug-in section was covered by Sundt and Genssler, who used Bluebeam to punch-list a 65,000 seat stadium. Because of the size of the project, they split the stadium into quadrants, and used aRevit plug-in and Revit BIM tool to provide punch lists.

They were assisted by the latest feature in the Revit plug-in, which gives users the ability to generate Spaces from Revit Rooms when creating PDF sheets and create markups directly in them. Users can also export Revit Rooms to area measurements, creating smarter PDFs that, besides facilitating the tracking of the location of all annotations, make area measurements easier and faster to calculate. According to Henry Lan of Sundt and Genssler, this is a huge, time-saving improvement.

The 3D PDF tool has been enhanced, and can handle linked Revit models. It can also transfer colour and material properties across to the PDF document to improve the appearance of 3D models, including effects like greyscsale, bricks and translucency. Bluebeam believes that PDFs can be a great format to communicate ideas to clients or to demonstrate design ideas to project teams. Bearing in mind that a typical Revit model size could be around 400Mb, a PDF version with materials included might be no more than 8 or 9Mb and, given the ability to toggle selections within the 3D PDF model, adjust visibility levels and so on, the different elements within a building - bricks, glazing - can be isolated and identified.

Other enhancements include Revu eXtreme's optical character recognition technology, OCR+, which has been updated to offer faster processing speeds and the ability to recognise vertical, as well as horizontal, scanned text. Three new alignment tools have also been added to enable markups to be placed with even greater precision, namely Align Center, Align Middle, and Center in Document. Users can also automatically place highlights on hyperlinks across multiple PDFs, then flatten or make hyperlinks visible without appearing on Markups lists, getting rid of the usual clutter associated with the practice.

Additional enhancements include dynamic XFA support, bookmark export formatting, more annotations alignment options, as well as the first opportunity for side-by-side installation of Revu 2016 and Vu 2016 for Open Licence customers.

The Bluebeam Mentor-Mentee relationship is an important feature of the software's development. As Bluebeam president and CEO Richard Lee explains: "Revu 2016 was developed through partnerships with our customers to help users push the boundaries of PDF navigation and reporting better than ever before. To showcase the value of these partnerships, we invited our customers to demonstrate Revu 2016, and we're happy they could help us make it the best Measurements and Take-offs Revu launch ever."
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