Bluebeam

I love Bluebeam desktop, so when I found out about the mobile app I was quite excited. However my need is to do punch lists and for some inexplicable reason it does not have a punch list symbol! You have to use some other shape and size it and color it every time. You can place a rectangle and set its shape and size but there is no way to replicate it without going through the whole process again! Even copy paste doesn’t work. Sometimes programmers need to get out more! So I completed a punch list by using rectangles. In some cases my rectangles were not perfectly in a space so I ended up with a spaceless comment, however it gets worse from there. I had trouble checking in on my phone, but it finally did. Then I got a conflict error and couldn’t download the final version to my computer. When I exported it to csv I had to compare each entry to my spreadsheet and manually paste many of them over. Of 140 items about half of them exported to csv: spaces without comments, comments without spaces. So a couple of hours of Excel work and I got the punch list issued. This app is not done. Apparently I beta checked it!

I have been a Bluebeam user for over a decade (Bluebeam eXtreme/Complete for Windows desktop, Revu for Mac (prior to end-of-life), and the BEST AEC PDF app ever invented - Revu for iPad (prior to end of life). Everyone in the industry knows that Bluebeam Revu for Windows desktop is the gold standard for the AEC industry as far as editing PDFs. Having been to the Bluebeam eXtreme Conference in 2015, 2016, and 2017 (LA, San Diego, and LA), I thought that Revu for iPad would be a great mobile tool for years to come. I even thought you’d incorporate some aspects of Project Atlas into the app (I’m from DFW & friends with the creators). I’m sure you know that not everyone likes or wants to or can utilize Studio to its fullest extent. Bluebeam Cloud is similar in this regard. It is a step DOWN from the Revu for iPad app. On the old Revu for iPad app I could do quick scaled measurements, have fluent viewing from markups created in Revu desktop, and it was the most used app I had on my iPad by far. After having paid for it, I assumed that it would continue to be serviceable for at least a few more years. Now I’ve got to (hopefully) retrain my teams, clients, and stakeholders in Bluebeam Cloud - which none of them like as much as they liked Revu for iPad. I can understand getting rid of Revu for Mac. It hurt, but I get it. However, iPads are the most common tablet on commercial jobsites hands down. So why kill it off? Why not keep it “as-is” for those of us that paid for it & used it with success for years?

Bluebeam Cloud, used on a computer, is great. You can create projects, upload and share drawings, upload and share documents, create submittal logs, generate RFI’s, and create punch list items. However, when you upload items under the documents tab they aren’t accessible from the iOS app. It appears that the only functions available from the iOS app are the drawings, submittal log, and punch list. Adding a function to the iOS app to allow you to access the items uploaded under the documents tab would make this a much better app. I’m not sure why this is. You can use a browser on your iPad to log into the cloud and access the items under the documents tab but the markup features for the drawings, the RFI’s, and punch list all work better from the app. So your stuck using the browser half the time to access documents and using the app to generate markups on drawings, create RFI’s, and punch list items the other half of time. Hopefully they allow access to the documents through the app in a future roll out. It would change my rating for the app to 5 stars. Also, it would be nice to be able to attach/upload the actual submittal document to the corresponding entry in the submittal log so that it could be viewed from there. This app has potential but needs some work.