Studio best practices
This article applies to:
- Revu 20 & below
Practical Considerations for Large Project Collaboration
The topics and guidelines presented below are designed to prevent potential storage and performance issues caused by extremely large file collections in Studio Projects or Sessions, and to ensure the best possible collaborative experience. This information is based on the experience of our customer-facing teams that regularly assist hundreds of thousands of Studio users.
What is a Large Project?
The size of a collection of project documents is determined by following criteria:
- The number of files or sheets.
-Or- - The combined file size of the documents, markups, or both.
The following are examples of large document sets in Studio:
- A 100% complete Construction Drawing or As-Built set of 1,000 sheets.
- A Studio Session hosting more than 100 drawing sheets. This can be comprised of any combination of single or multi-page PDFs.
- A Studio Session hosting more than 250MB of PDF files.
- A Studio Session where more than 20 attendees are likely to markup the files.
- A Studio Project where the total file size of the documents exceeds 10GB.
- A Studio Project where Batch Processes are likely to be used on PDF files with a combined file size of more than 100MB or more, or a page count of at least 250 pages.
Best practices
Design Reviews in Studio Sessions
Although the real-time collaborative capability of Studio Sessions greatly speeds up the Design Review process, the project will become larger and more complex as the number of sheets increases. Here are a few steps you can take to ensure the quickest possible performance:
- Use the fastest and most stable internet connection possible.
While working with a large collection of documents or drawings, it is possible for a Project to contain upwards of 25GB of data. Downloading and uploading this amount of data to and from the Session and each attendee requires the fastest and most stable internet connection possible. - Minimize the file size of your PDFs as much as possible.
Before uploading your files, remove any unnecessary or unwanted content, such as Layers, file attachments, and unnecessary markups (such as "SHX Text" markups) included in PDFs exported from Autodesk AutoCAD.
Consider using the Reduce File Size feature in Revu.
- Be careful when using data-heavy markups. For example:
Grouped Markups – If you are going to combine markups together, you should ideally minimize the number of individual items within each Group. It is best to avoid using this functionality unless it's necessary.
Snapshots – We recommend using the “leanest” Snapshots possible, which do not include background content or data from the original document.
To do this, capture the part of the original page you want to add to your document, but before pasting it onto the destination file, you should first paste it into a new, blank PDF, and retake the snapshot from there. This second version of the Snapshot will be free from any unnecessary data.
Images & Videos – Whether you are using the Image tool or the Capture feature to add photographs or videos to a PDF in a Studio Session, it is important to remember that Studio transmits document and markup changes back and forth between the Session and each attendee. This being the case, it is important to consider that the large file size of high- resolution files may have an adverse effect on overall performance.
- Upload your drawings to a Studio Project first.
Storing large numbers of drawing sheets covering various disciplines in a Studio Project helps keep your documents and folder structure organized and intact. Whenever you decide to collaborate on any of those files in real-time, you can add copies of selected Project files to a new or existing Studio Session. Once the Session attendees have finish working on the drawings, you can use the Update Project Copy function to update the original version in the corresponding Studio Project.
This has the added benefit of building a Revision History for any drawing that your colleagues work on in the Session.
Working with Large Quantities of Markups
If Session attendees are likely to simultaneously apply or edit large quantities of markups across multiple sheets, it is important to consider the possible performance impact. As the number of attendees in a Session increases, the amount of data transmitted between the Session and each attendee increases rapidly.
Document Preparation
Before uploading your drawings or documents to Bluebeam Studio, we strongly recommend taking care of the following tasks so that you will not have to remove, correct, and re-upload them:
- Prepare your Custom Markup Statuses ahead of time.Although Studio Sessions allows you to select different options in the Status column of the Markup List, you will need to create and apply all Custom Statuses to your drawings before uploading them.
- To ensure accurate calibrations and measurements, you should go to the Measurements Panel and delete all untitled or unwanted Viewports.
- Make sure that all sheets and documents are oriented correctly, as you will not be able to change this after you upload them.Further information about rotating PDF documents can be found in Rotating PDF Files: Rotate Pages vs. Rotate View & Adding Text to a Rotated PDF as well as the Revu Help.
Drawing Management for Studio Projects
Studio Projects is a convenient and powerful service for sharing information and files with collaborators, while maintaining file integrity and a Revision History for tracking the activity of attendees. For the best end-user experience please consider the following factors before uploading files to your Studio Project:
- Network Speed While working with a large collection of documents or drawings, it is possible for a Project to contain upwards of 25GB of data. Downloading and uploading this amount of data to and from the Session and each attendee requires the fastest and most stable internet connection possible.
- Using the Sets feature or Batch Processing If the total file size or your PDFs is greater than 100MB, or has a page count of at least 250 pages, we strongly recommend running these CPU or time intensive functions before uploading them to the Studio Project.This is an important consideration, because editing documents in Studio requires extra time, bandwidth, and processing to support proper file access, document management, and version control (in Studio Projects). Additionally, new files which have yet to be cached locally need added processing when initially uploading and downloading them.
How-To
Revu 2017 & Below
Revu 2018
Revu 2019
Revu for Mac 1
Revu for Mac 2
Studio Enterprise
Studio
