Plot Interactive PDFs with Links

[cdohh]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post here, so bear with me.

Does anyone know if there is a way (via plugin, or other way) to export/plot PDFs embedded with links (I believe they are called interactive PDFs) that allow you to click on sections/elevations/callout tags on the sheets and be taken to the page which they exist on? It seems like it would be a no-brainer as far as workflow and red-lining go, but I haven't seen anything like this done yet. Doesn't seem like it would be too much extra work to make it happen either, since within Revit itself you can double-click the section/elevation/callout tags and arrive at the individual drawings (not the sheets themselves) -- so Revit intuitively knows where the drawings exist once they are placed on sheets. To me it definitely does seem doable. I poked around a bit with the third-party Bluebeam, and they have some great stuff in there with exporting PDFs, 3DPDFs, Markups and so on--but nothing (that I saw) that would embed all the drawing/annotation tags as links within an exported PDF. This would definitely be high up on my wish-list for the next release (or if a 3rd party came out with it). Would make it much easier to digitally navigate drawing sets without having to fish through heavy PDF drawings to the correct page.

Who knows, it might even begin sway people who still prefer reviewing physical drawing sets to use a computer or tablet to review/mark up sets. Save the environment!

Anyway, figured I'd throw it out there and see what you all had to say.

Thanks!
Chris

(Sidenote: I'm working in 2012, but I didn't notice that anything related to this changed in 2013)

[cdatechguy]

Yep...take a look at exporting all your views as a DWF....and then using Design Review to make comments and the ability to bring that DWF back into Revit and see the comments...

(And you already have this....)

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Welcome to the forums Chris.
Revit used to have this functionality but it was disabled when Autodesk decided to implement DWF as their default. (I can't recall which release) As Michael suggests you are better off exporting to DWF, it's free and should be on your computer as part of the default install.
You also get the added benefit of data properties for objects and easy printing of 3D models of your project. New year; time to explore new options and workflows?

[irneb]

Yep, unfortunately only DWF/DWFx allows for this these days. And seeing as you can't export / saveas to anything else in Design Review, you might want to get a converter (just google for "DWF to PDF").

[cdatechguy]

Nice thing is you can still send the DWF to the printer....if you outsource your prints that is....

[cdohh]

Thanks for the reply everyone! Definitely appreciated. I'd never really dealt much with DWFs, so I tried out a test set yesterday and it works pretty well - pretty close to what I was hoping. Without this sounding a bit naive, do you think that the reason why Revit only allows this (the use of embedded links) directly to a DWF (a file type developed by Autodesk) instead of a PDF (a more universal file type) is because of Autodesk's proclivity to keep their files under their collective roof (or in other words, make it tougher to transfer some file types from Autodesk to non-Autodesk programs).

Just saying this because it seems like it would definitely be doable in a PDF format, and would be more widely accessible--especially for people who aren't necessary marking up drawings but just looking through sets (clients, consultants..etc). Not sure, just a thought though. Would definitely be easier for me personally when I'm referencing details to be able to pull up an entire PDF set and click through the links on section/elevation/callout tags and pull up that sheet.

[irneb]

You might be correct in your assumption, only the decision makers at ADesk could answer :roll:

3 things to note, which are impossible (or only partially possible) in PDFs:

A DWFX can be opened inside Internet Explorer (so nearly everyone with Windows can view / print it).
If the client installs the free Design Review, he's able to markup this, send the file back to you and then you can overlay the markups onto your original - so it's easier to see where changes are supposed to happen.
You can compare two DWF(x)'s indicating deletions / additions by marking them in colour (default del=red, add=green). We use it to more easily figure out what to cloud just before issuing a revision - just so we don't miss something.