How to create and save custom markups in the Tool Chest

This article applies to:

  • Revu 20
  • Revu 2019
  • Revu 2018

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Add markups to the Tool Chest

The Tool Chest stores custom markups so you can quickly add them to your PDFs without having to recreate them. The Tool Chest comes pre-loaded with several collections of markups called tool sets. You can create your own tool sets with individual or grouped markups, and even share custom tool sets with other users.

To add a markup to the Tool Chest:

  1. Click the Tool Chest (Alt+X).
  2. Right-click on a markup, click Add to Tool Chest and then select the name of the tool set.

Set custom markups as default

  1. Select a tool you would like to customize, such as the Text Box, Cloud, or Polyline tools. 
  2. Right-click on the markup, and select Properties (Alt+P). The Properties Panel appears. 
  3. Adjust the tool’s properties to your liking, such as the color, line size, or font-size. 
  4. Go to the bottom of the Properties Panel and select Set as Default.

Your selected tool will now appear by default with the properties you set. 

Group multiple markups and add them to the Tool Chest

Markup tools in Revu can be grouped together, allowing them to be moved, resized, copied, and added to the Tool Chest as an individual markup.

  1. Hold Shift to select multiple markups.
  2. Right-click one of the selected markups and click Group (Ctrl+G).
  3. Right-click on the grouped markup, click Add to Tool Chest, and then select the desired tool set.

Create and import tool sets

You can create new tool sets to better organize the custom markups that you create. The new tool set will automatically display in the Tool Chest and will be available as an option when you click Add to Tool Chest.

Add a new tool set

  1. Click the Tool Chest dropdown at the top of the Tool Chest panel, then click Manage Tool Sets. The Manage Tool Sets dialog box appears.
  2. Click the Add button.
  3. Click New, type a title, and then click OK.

Add an existing tool set

You can also add a tool set that’s been imported or shared with you as an existing .btx file.

  1. Go to the Tool Chest panel and click the Tool Chest dropdown menu.
  2. Select Manage Tool Sets, and the dialog box will appear.
  3. Click Add…
  4. Select Existing and enter the full/relative path to the .btx file, or click the Browse button on the far right to find the tool set on your computer via the File Explorer.
    Add an existing Tool Set
    Entering the full path will locate a .btx file on your local drive, while using a relative path will access a tool set according to its folder location. A relative path is helpful if you’re trying to add a tool set saved on a shared drive or in a DMS.
  5. Under Options, ensure Display and Show In All Profiles are selected. Select Relative Path if you entered a relative path above.
  6. Click OK.

For more information about importing tool sets, please see How to share Tool Sets.

Properties mode vs. Drawing mode

Markups in the Tool Chest can function in two different modes. Drawing mode creates an exact copy of what you’ve added to the Tool Chest. Properties mode will create a new markup using the same visual properties of the original markup (i.e. color, shape, and size).

Double-click the icon in the Tool Chest to switch between modes. The icon will change to show the difference between the two modes.

Drawing vs. Properties Mode
To switch between Drawing and Properties modes, double-click a tool icon.
Grouped markups and Stamps are always in Drawing mode.

Symbol view vs. Detail view

When you have several similar markups saved in your Tool Chest, it can be difficult to tell them apart when using the default Symbol view.

Detail view displays markups in a tool set alongside information like Subject, Comment, and Labels, making it easier to distinguish between them.

To change the display of a tool set:

  1. Click the Settings icon corresponding to your tool set(s).
  2. Select either Symbol  or Detail  from the dropdown menu.
    Symbol vs. Detail

Exceptions

There are some markups that can’t be included in tool sets. These exceptions are:

  • Notes
  • Hyperlinks
  • File attachments
  • Text editing tools (Review Text , Underline , Squiggly line , Strikeout , and Text Highlights )
  • Symbols that already have a Sequence or Action defined.

Other versions of this article

Revu 2017 and older

Summary

Using the Tool Chest to create and save custom markups

Relevant Products

Bluebeam Revu


The Tool Chest is one of Revu’s most productive features. It contains markups and symbols that can be reused quickly to make your work quicker and easier. The Tool Chest comes pre-loaded with multiple collections of symbols called tool sets.

You are not limited to using just these tool sets. You can also create your own using the markups tools in Revu. You can add individual markups – including a Text Box or Area Measurement – or you can group different types of markups so they function as a single symbol. There are only a few types of markups that cannot be used in the Tool Chest.

You can also share your tool sets with other Bluebeam users on your team so your work will be consistent between users.

To begin, the first thing you need to do is display the Tool Chest:

  • Click the Tool Chest icon in the left or right panel, or
  • Press Alt+X.
A list of Revu keyboard shortcuts is available in the Revu Help menu and on our web site.

Add to the Tool Chest

Adding a markup to the Tool Chest is easy. There are two ways to do it:

  • Right-click on any markup, click Add to Tool Chest and then the name of the tool set, or
  • Drag any markup from Recent Tools into the tool set where you want to save it.

For example, here’s how you would add three different color highlights to the Tool Chest.

  1. Press Alt+P to display the Properties tab.
  2. Draw three highlights on the PDF.
  3. Select the first highlight and change the color to red.
  4. Change the second to blue and last to green.
  5. Right-click on the red highlight, click Add to Tool Chest and then My Tools.
  6. Repeat for the blue and green highlights.

Now you can quickly use three different colors of highlights.

Set custom markups as default

  1. Select a tool you would like to customize, such as the Text Box, Cloud, or Polyline tools. 
  2. Right-click on the markup, and select Properties (ALT+P). The Properties Panel appears. 
  3. Adjust the tool’s properties to your liking, such as the color, line size, or font-size. 
  4. Go to the bottom of the Properties Panel and select Set as Default.

Your selected tool will now appear by default with the properties you set. 

Properties mode vs. Drawing mode

Individual markups added to the Tool Chest can function in two different modes. Properties mode will create a new markup using the display properties (like Color and Line width). Drawing mode creates an exact copy of what you’ve added to the Tool Chest. For example, Drawing mode allows you to create a green Text Box containing a long note that you use over and over, while Properties mode creates an empty green Text Box.

Double-click on the icon in the Tool Chest to switch between modes. The icon will change to show the difference between the two modes.

Groups and Stamps are always in Drawing mode.

Group multiple markups together and add to the Tool Chest

Revu’s markup tools can be used as building blocks to create more complex custom symbols. These can be “grouped” into a single markup – allowing them to be moved, resized and copied as a single element – and then added to the Tool Chest.

Here is a quick example of creating a grouped symbol:

  1. Create a Text Box.
  2. Create a Rectangle around it.
  3. Hold down the Shift key and draw a selection rectangle around the markups you just created. The control points of all the markups will display when they are selected.
  4. Right-click on one of the markups and then click Group Ctrl+G. A single markup will be created and there will be only one set of control points.
  5. Right-click on the grouped markup and then click Add to Tool Chest, then My Tools.

All of the pre-loaded tool sets in Revu were created exactly the same way. Feel free to use an existing symbol in Revu as a starting point for creating your custom symbols. Just add one of the existing symbols to the PDF, right-click on it and then click Ungroup. This will break the group back into separate markups which you can modify to make the symbol that you need.

Adding information to your custom tool set

You can change more than just how your markups look. You can also add information that will be included each time a symbol is added to the PDF. For example, you can change the subject in the Properties tab to something more descriptive.

Create area measurements with different subjects and colors

I’ll demonstrate this with an example. You can make Area measurements for two different floor materials by changing the subject and the color. This will make it easy to see the takeoffs for different materials. Try doing this:

  1. Add two Area measurements to the PDF.
  2. Change the subject of the first to “Wood Floor” and the color to green.
  3. Change the subject of the second to “Carpet Floor” and change the color to blue.
  4. Add both to the Tool Chest.
  5. Change the symbols to Properties mode.

You can take this further if you also change the Fill Color, Text Color and check the Highlight check box in the Properties tab. The same changes can be done for the other types of measurements.

Create a simple symbol with dynamic text:

Dynamic Text is not directly supported in symbols, but you can include a stamp that contains dynamic text. The dynamic text is updated when the symbol is added to the PDF. A previous article covered dynamic text in detail.

Here is a quick example of creating a symbol that includes dynamic text:

  1. Add the DateTime stamp to the PDF.
  2. Create a Rectangle rectangle around the stamp.
  3. Select and then Group Ctrl+G them.
  4. Right-click and then click Add to Tool Chest.
  5. Add the symbol to the PDF.

The dynamic text for the date and time are updated when the symbol is added to the PDF.

Create a tool set

Different types of symbols can be organized into different tool sets so you can create your own tools sets and also distribute them to other users.

To create a new tool set:

  1. Click the Manage Tool Sets properties button in the Tool Chest toolbar. The Manage Tool Sets dialog box will display.
  2. Click the Add button.
  3. Click New, type a Title and click OK.

The new tool set will automatically display in the Tool Chest and will appear in the list of tool sets when you click Add to Tool Chest.


Exceptions

There are some markups that cannot be included in tool sets. These exceptions are Notes, Hyperlinks, file attachments, the edit text tools (Review Text , Underline , Squiggly line , Strikeout ), text Highlight as well as symbols that already have a Sequence or Action defined.

Useful Shortcuts

Selecting markups

There are a few different ways to select multiple markups, including the following:

  • Shift+click
  • Shift+drag rectangle, left to right, right to left.
  • Lasso lasso tool Shift+O
  • Ctrl+A to select all markups on a page.
  • Select the markups in the Markups markups-list list.

If you’d like more information about customizing, creating and saving custom markups or creating tool sets for estimations, you can find it on our website or in the Revu Help Guide. Along with this, we also have a collection of video tutorials and FAQs to help you with using other Revu features.

How-To

Revu 20

Revu 2019

Revu 2018

Revu 2017 & Below

Markup

With Revu, you can create your own tool sets with individual or grouped markups, and share custom tool sets with other users. Get started with these steps.

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