Bluebeam Revu is a PDF management, control, and editing tool. It enables collaboration and markup within shared documents across projects’ life cycles and has takeoff and bid creation capabilities.
$349
per seat
Fieldwire
Score 9.8 out of 10
N/A
Fieldwire is a mobile-first (iPad / iPhone, Android) collaboration platform designed for construction foremen, superintendents and engineers. The application allows field workers to access up-to-date information like blueprints, files and tasks directly on their mobile device. Fieldwire focuses on the effective collaboration of field workers around three core use cases: Plan viewing & versioning; Issue tracking; Task management & scheduling. The collaboration platform is structured around plans…
Fieldwire is the best of all worlds. It takes the best of each management software and implements that into one all-inclusive software for contractors and design professionals alike. Implementing Fieldwire into construction projects is very easy because the app and software are …
As stated before, the mobile application is a great companion to the desktop version. Either one works great in viewing, editing and saving documents. While the measurement tool is handy to have, we have found the precision to be lacking when measuring scaled drawings (construction design drawings). While it is a good rough place to start for measurements, we wouldn't recommend relying on the precision of the measurements taken on something with a very large scale.
Fieldwire is excellent for anyone who needs to view and consult drawings as part of their job. Anyone on a construction site can benefit from using Fieldwire.
If you have several tabs open and you try to drag one out for a side by side view then you do not have all the modification options and you have to combine them back together.
There is a lag time when hitting the print option.
There is also a lag time when opening files, sometimes I think the window is frozen.
I wish the basic version also had basic file editing, as in editing a document as Adobe does.
Bluebeam is a powerful PDF viewer and mark-up tool. We are more familiar with it than Adobe Acrobat Pro or other viewers, and it has more features geared towards construction document managers than Acrobat Pro does.
I'm constantly finding that Bluebeam Revu does more than I knew it could. And when I find something that it can't do, I've found that Bluebeam truly listens to its user base and will work to incorporate any good suggestion when feasible.
I use this all the time for my field measurements. But sometimes when I am working offline and upload it to cloud after coming to office, the tags get messed up. Some lines I drew at plan gets missing
Its hard for me to give a rating on this one as we rarely have to use the support feature for Bluebeam. However, when we have used it, they have been ultra supportive in helping us get exactly what we needed. I know another engineer was trying to figure out a feature and the rep gave a detailed tutorial on how to complete the task
Bluebeam is a diverse program with many functions and tools, whereas competitive programs only specialize in one or few tasks. Although there are many tools within the program, users can still quickly learn how to use the program to best fit their needs. There is always a help tab for any assistance needed.
Fieldwire for sure has better mobile usage, however, Smartsheet has better organization and charts. Ideally using both software together would help us achieve our goals and what we needed but the cost to run both software will cost you more than what other larger project management software competitors would charge for the same service.
A major positive aspect is being able to take your computer home without taking the entire set of paper drawings. They have made it so easy to navigate a set of drawings that I can work at home using only the digital drawings.
Collaboration with owners and architects has been a great feature. Setting up a Bluebeam studio and having everyone get in and mark things up, then having the architect be able to go in and see what markups have been added, has made the constructability review process much much better.
Even when not working on drawings, Bluebeam is a very good tool for working with standard PDF documents. The markup tools are very easy to use.
The negative aspect is the takeoff function because some people would like estimators to use the Bluebeam takeoff because it would make their job easier down the road; however, the actual act of doing a full scale takeoff in Bluebeam would require much more time.
We have been able to save our team so much time during the data organization and download phase, allowing more time for technical analysis.
We have saved our clients a lot of money by efficiently documenting deficiencies and seamlessly moving from one phase to the next without doubling work or losing data.
