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Thread: What tools are the best choice for reviewing PDF files sent to us by our Architect

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    Question What tools are the best choice for reviewing PDF files sent to us by our Architect

    We are a homebuilder of single family production homes, custom homes, and multifamily condos and townhouses. Our various architects are sending us PDF files of each page of a the drawings via email, or by placing them on their FTP site for us and our contractors to download. The expectation is that we will print them for review and discussion, or send the PDF files for bidding by our subcontractors.

    Are there some preferred tools for marking up PDF files? I also want to isolate small portions of the drawing that can be forwarded to a contractor for discussion by creating a specific PDF file with that smaller portion of the full drawing. Imagine a cut and paste from one or more sheets to a new document.

    If using the PDF files for markup is not the preferred method, what is the most likely recommendations of methodology we might make to our multiple architects so that we have minimal cost invested in both software and learning curve and a single piece of software to accomplish this? We want more than one person in our company to have these capabilities and expect the same process to be useful for more than one architect or engineering professional at multiple companies.

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    Default Re: What tools are the best choice for reviewing PDF files sent to us by our Architect

    I personally would probably use Autodesk's Design Review along with a free pdf printer such as CutePDF.

    To create files based on other reference files as you describe, you could usually open the file in Design Review (sometimes I've had warnings on PDF files that "some things may not display properly" or something along those lines, but have yet to notice anything obviously different). Then, you could use something like "Copy Current View" from the Home tab or or various snapshot methods from the Tools tab. (I find the former much easier, but do what works for you.) You could add various notes / markup using Design Review, then use your PDF writer to "print" a pdf version. You could always take those copied views and paste them into Word or other document editing software, rather than a new DWF, depending on how / what you want to do.

    If you want to keep costs down, you could use LibreOffice or OpenOffice in conjunction with Design Review and the free print-driver-only version of CutePDF to keep the total software cost at 0.

    As far as preferences go, I like working with native DWF or DWFx files better than PDFs, but PDFs are something everyone should be familiar with. I've given up trying to "force" DWF files on anyone, even inside my office. Often I just offer files in two different versions (DWFx and PDF) and let the recipient use whichever they prefer.

    Fair warning, you won't easily be able to do any super-advanced or detailed drawing with the above methods; that's not what they're intended for. But if you need to do simple things like copy a view and cloud it with a note such as "verify opening dimension = XX'-XX"" or "specify preferred brand for widget Y" it should work just fine.

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