BlueBeam Revu? Why use it instead of Design Review?

[mmanning]

Several months ago we started a project engagement and one of the other vendors/contractors suggested we all use BlueBeam Revu for the drawing reveiw process. Since none of the other companies involved in the project, including the client, were using BlueBeam at the time I suggested Design Review for the obvious reason that Design Review at least maintains all markups in a format that can be opened directly in AutoCAD versus in PDF format. I was rebuffed.

So my question at this point is why use something like BlueBeam? AutoCAD already has a PDF writer, and as mentioned Design Review uses a format that is usable by AutoCAD and is free!. Am I missing other features or function in BlueBeam that make it worth shelling out extra money?

[pendean]

Did you visit the BlueBeam website to review it and compare?
Do they have a trial version you can test to see why they think it's better?

90% of the world out there don't know and don't care to know about AutoCAD and Autodesk, so it may be a simple as "they found something that worked for them and want everyone to use it". Much like you are doing now 🙂

[mmanning]

Yeah, I looked at it, which is why I suggested to our project manager to recommend Design Review instead. Our consultants are using the 30 day trial version for now.

In simple terms we are a consultancy that works in industrial engineering designing distribution centers. Any verdor we work with is CAD literate and 99% of them us AutoCAD or some other Autdesk product, including the vendor (architect) who recommended using BlueBeam. In fact 80 to 90 percent of our clients have in house engineering departments that have at least a couple AutoCAD seats.

That's why I figured Design Review would be better for what we do. It's included with AutoCAD, or can be downloaded from the Autodesk site for free and bundled with DWG TruView. Allows markups that can be loaded with the drawing in AutoCAD, etc. Basically native. I guess I see the point of BlueBeam if you are dealing with clients (homeowners maybe) who don't have a clue about AutoCAD, or any kind of CAD package, but in our case most people we interact with do.

[pendean]

Then it's between all your of team members to decide on a standard: whoever is in charge sets the rules, if that's you then step up to the plate. if it's not, start getting your voice heard.

FYI, from many years of experience here: never get into a you-know-what match with software choices, whomever wins will never hear the end of it; it's flaws will be paraded in public to no end for the entire length of the project and any delays/hiccups/misses will always get blamed on it.

[mmanning]

Yeah, I realize all that. I obviously am coming off as "boohoo they didn't listen to me" when what I am actually trying to figure out is did I miss something about BlueBeam that is wicked awesome. If there IS something I'm missing then I can say "Oh, I get it, yeah we should buy a bunch of seat of that". If not then I can recommend we be a bit more forceful in the future. Obviously in our case we have to, to a point, abide by what the client want to do. This time around though it was another contactor steering the ship when it should have been us.

They aren't actually my project team btw. I am in charge of IT, purchasing and license compliance. My only involvement was they asked what I thought and when I told them what I thought they should do they went silent for several months only to have it come up again the other day.

[dgorsman · Accepted solution]

This may be more of a fact they are familar with Bluebeam/PDF and are not familiar with Design Review/DWF.  They don't want to invest the time in dealing with yet-another-program, free or not, when they are already set up and licensed.

[mmanning]

Probably had a lot to do with it on that vendor's part. Being architects they more likely than not have to deal with clients from time to time who aren't CAD literate as mentioned earlier, though they are primarily commecial rather than residential.

My view, though with obviously limited comparative experience is that Design Review provides better workflow since our folks can markup in design meetings and then the consultant actually working on the drawings can pretty much do so in place without having to flinch since everything is right there in the drawing. No referenceing back to a seperate PDF.

So any actual BlueBeam users who can chime in?