How to manage large PDFs with Sets

Applies to:

  • Revu 21
  • Revu 20
  • Revu 2019
  • Revu 2018

Jump to other versions:

For Revu 21, sets are available only to Core and Complete subscription plans.

A set can load multiple PDFs in Revu as if they were one document. Any revisions that are present are automatically grouped with their appropriate pages. Revu can also detect the sheet name and use it to automatically sort the documents by discipline. Since the files are hyperlinked rather than combined, you can load and navigate files quickly. You can organize files in folders. You can also share sets with your coworkers.

Create a Set

To create a set, open the Sets panel. If the Sets panel doesn’t appear on your screen, go to Window > Panels > Sets to activate it.

  1. In the Sets panel, select Sets > New Set.
  2. Select Add, and select the files you want to include in your set.
  3. Select OK.
  4. Click Select, and then click and drag around the area of your document where your sheet name or number appears.

Revu will use AutoMark to tag and name these articles, and present a table of the named sheets where you can edit any mistakes from the AutoMark process.

If you’re satisfied with the sheet names, Revu will use these names in the set.

To save your set, select Sets > Save Set.

You can navigate through your files with the  Sets panel. If a particular sheet contains revisions, you can use the arrows just below the thumbnail to look through them. Pages with revisions will show additional pages stacked beneath their thumbnail.

Categorize Sets

To edit how Revu categorizes your PDFs, go to Revu > Preferences > Sets > Categories. During the AutoMark process, Revu will attempt to identify which discipline the PDF belongs to based on which letter in the filter column matches the beginning of the sheet name. To change either the discipline name or the letter used to identify a discipline, double-click the row.

The default disciplines in Revu are based on AIA Standards. International users who follow other CAD standards must set up their own categories prior to creating sets.

After you define the disciplines, you can browse sheets by discipline to make navigation even easier.

Share Sets

You can only share sets with your coworkers if they have access to the same file paths in the set. The easiest way to share a set is to use the following procedure to save the set file (.bex) and accompanying PDFs to a shared network drive:

  1. Create or move a folder containing all of the relevant PDFs in a set to your network drive.
  2. Create a set using the steps above.
  3. Select Sets > Save Set As, and give your set a name and save it on the network drive.

If you don’t have a network drive, you can share a set by compressing the set as a .zip and sending the compressed file directly to your coworker.

To do this, you need to create a folder that contains the .bex file and the PDFs in the set. Make sure that the links in the set are relative and point to the correct locations within the folder, then send the compressed folder in an email or a file-sharing system.

Once the files are in the correct place on the network drive, here’s how to open the set:

  1. Select Sets > Open Set.
  2. Navigate to the .bex file you saved earlier to select it.

Even More about Sets

If you ever get stuck, or if you want to try even more Sets features, be sure to check out Sets in the Revu Help Manual.

How-To

Revu 2018

Revu 2019

PDF Management

Revu 20

Revu 21

Other versions of this article

Revu 2017 and older

Here at Bluebeam, we’re always asking for customer feedback so we can build and improve upon the tools that “let you do what you do, better”. A few years ago, we’d heard you loud and clear about one particular headache: working with a single PDF that contains a large quantity of pages. This can be cumbersome for a number of reasons. For starters:

  • The file can easily become too large to email.
  • Team members must wait their turn to make revisions when the PDF lives on a document management system, even though they may only want to access a few of the pages.
  • The project is at risk of losing version control if team members extract pages from the document to work on them separately.

Naturally, a project team would want to separate those pages to individual PDFs to keep them protected and easier to manage. Yet, it is still important to keep all the information together – ideally, in a location that is just a click away.

In Revu 11, we solved this problem with the introduction of Sets.

How does Sets Work?

With Sets, you can keep all related pages separate and still view and navigate through them as if they are a single document, in a single tab, without ever needing to merge those files together. So, now you can view your entire construction drawing set in one place. And there are other benefits, too. Previous revisions are stacked behind the current version so you don’t lose track of the changes throughout the project. For example, let’s say the architect has sent several revised floor plan sheets as part of the latest addendum. Sets enables you to insert the addendum sheets as the current drawing without losing the ability to view the previous floor plans. Plus, pages that were never going to be able to be combined because of PDF security restrictions or digital signatures can now be viewed as a part of the Set.

You can create a Set with PDF files from ProjectWise, SharePoint, Bluebeam Studio Projects and a local or network drive. You can even view files that live separately in each of those locations as a complete Set. Then, once you’ve started a Set, you can sort the files by page label or numeric sequence and share the read-only Set with colleagues and project partners.


Please check out the video tutorials covering Sets , Sets 2.0 , and Sets 3.0 , as well as the Revu Manual, which can be accessed by going to the Bluebeam Support page.


How-To

Revu 2017 & Below

PDF Management

Working with large amounts of PDFs can be tedious. Using Sets in Revu can help.

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