Fast-Track Your MIDP Quality Checks with Bluebeam Bookmarks

The Problem: Drawing Titleblock Review Before Milestones

You’re about to hit a project milestone, and you need to review the drawing titleblock content from multiple teams. The challenge? These drawings come from various authoring tools like Revit, MicroStation, Civil3D, ArchiCAD, and more. So, how do you efficiently review all this data?

The Solution: Bluebeam’s Bookmark Feature

Bluebeam offers a powerful solution to this problem. With its bookmark feature, you can generate a comprehensive drawing list with all the necessary drawing information in just a few simple steps. Here’s how:

Step 1: Collate All PDFs in a Binder

First, gather all the PDF drawing sheets from different authoring tools and collate them into a single PDF binder. This will make it easier to manage and review the drawings.

Step 2: Configure the Bookmark Tool

1. Open the Bookmarks panel in Bluebeam.
2. If there are any existing bookmarks, delete them as they won’t be needed. You can do this quickly by collapsing the bookmarks, selecting all and then deleting.

3. Configure the bookmark tool to capture the information you need to check. For example, you can set it to capture the drawing number, title, and author.

4. Use a unique delimiter to separate the data fields. I personally use the pipe ‘|' as a delimiter because it makes the data easy to separate later in Excel. Choose a character that isn’t used in any of your fields.
5. When extracting values such as the “SHEET: 1 OF 1” in the example below, avoid selecting special characters as the output will become jumbled. To avoid errors in the data extract, extract the data in parts, eg; SHEET [Region x] OF [Region y] and of course, don’t forget your delimiter.

When you click OK, Bluebeam will automatically create a bookmark with data extracted from the same position of each drawing.

Note: For more details on how to configure bookmarks, you can refer to these resources:

• Automatic Bookmarks and Page Labels
• Working with Bookmarks – Bluebeam Support
• Using Bluebeam Page Label Tool

Step 3: Export to Excel

1. Once you’ve configured the bookmarks, export them to Excel.

2. You can either define the delimiter used to split your text when importing the CSV, or alternatively, you can bring the data in as-is and then use Excel’s “Text to Columns” feature to separate the data by your chosen delimiter.

Step 4: Review and Report

Congratulations! You’ve just streamlined a typically cumbersome process, saving you time and reducing the risk of errors.

You now have a comprehensive CSV file where you can quickly identify errors and omissions. Report back to the appropriate teams to rectify any issues.

So there you have it—a quick and efficient way to review drawing titleblock content using Bluebeam’s bookmark feature. Give it a try and let us know how it works for you!