How to collaborate in Studio with teammates who don’t own Revu

Applies to:

  • Revu 20
As of June 28, 2023, support for Revu 2019 & below has reached End of Life. Having trouble accessing Studio? Click here to find out more.

If you have a team member who doesn’t own Revu, but you want to invite them to a Studio Project or Session, you can by having them use Revu in View Mode.

If you’re using Revu 21, View Mode is now referred to as Read-only for collaborators without an active Bluebeam Plan. For more information about how to work in Revu and Studio without a subscription, please visit this article.

There are two sides to Studio: Studio Projects and Studio Sessions. This article will help you figure out which is best for the collaboration needs of your team, and how you and your team members can participate in both.

How to activate View Mode

To start, you need to download and install Revu on your computer. When the installer asks you to enter your serial number and product key, select Use as Trial. This will activate a 30-day trial of Revu, granting you full access to the software. Once the trial ends, Revu will automatically switch View Mode. To switch to View Mode at any time, select Revu > View Mode.

Studio Sessions

Studio Sessions are for PDF-based online collaboration. While in a Studio Session, any Revu 20 user in View Mode will have access to all of the markup and tool set features normally reserved for licensed users of Revu. This means that you can take measurements, add comments, and place markups on PDFs to share your thoughts with others participating in the Studio Session with you.

How Sessions work

While in a Session, there is no need to check files in and out. You can select a PDF to open it, even if other users have the PDF opened. All users in a Session can markup the document, and everyone can see what others are adding or have added. There’s a record that captures user activity, including the username and what they added, modified, or removed from the PDF.

How to edit markups

To maintain user accountability, markups can only be edited or removed by the user who initially created them.

Automatic cloud backup

All markups are added in real-time and uploaded to the cloud as you add them to the PDF. Even if you lose connection to the Session, your markups are stored safely in the cloud within that Session. Revu will remember which PDFs you had open and will restore them automatically, so you can pick up where you left off once internet connectivity is restored.

Studio Projects

Studio Projects is Bluebeam’s document management system that lets you store many different file types, such as PDFs, Microsoft Office files, and images, in the cloud. As a user in View Mode, you may only view Project files. However, if there’s a PDF in the Project that you need to add markups to, you can ask the Project owner (the person who invited you to the Project) to add the PDF to a Session. Alternatively, the Project owner can also use the Share Link feature, which allows you to download a local copy of the Project file to your PC.

How to add Project documents to a Session

The Project owner needs to right-click the PDF document and add it to a new Session. The owner can give this ability to other users in the Project via Permissions as well. Once the PDF is added to a Session, a user in View mode can access that Session as before, using either an invitation link or the Studio ID number.

As the Project owner, follow the steps below:

  1. Select the file, and click Actions in the top-right corner.
  2. Select Share Link.
  3. Choose how long the download link should be active, and whether you want to require a password.
  4. Click OK.

Revu will generate a hyperlink that you can copy and distribute. Users in View Mode will be able to download the file from this link.

Note that users will be downloading a local version of the Project file. The downloaded file will not be connected to the Project in any way.

How to work with non-PDF files in Projects

You can also upload other file types, such as Excel spreadsheets and Word documents, to Studio Projects. These files may be checked out and edited locally using the appropriate application, then checked back into the Project.

To work with non-PDF file types:

  1. Right-click the file, and select Check Out
  2. Right-click the file again, and select  Open.
  3. Edit the document in the application that opens, and save your changes as you normally would.
  4. Back in the Project, right-click the file listed in the Pending section, and select  Check In.
During the check-in process, you’ll be prompted to add comments. These comments will be added to the document’s Revision History. To view the Revision History, right click the document, and select Revision History.
Remember that these tasks are for non-PDF documents only. PDF markup and editing in a Project is restricted when using Revu in View Mode. Use a Studio Session instead to markup PDF documents.

How to recover Studio files

If you lose internet connectivity after you check out a file, you should see your activity in the Pending Changes section. Once you connect to the internet again, pending changes will save to the Project file.

How-To

Studio

Revu 20

Have you ever wanted to invite a team member who doesn’t own Revu to a Studio Project or Session? You can, by having them use Revu in View Mode.

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