Bluebeam Revu now out for Apple’s Mac Platform—Big win for Mac in AEC

This has been a long time coming but Bluebeam, Inc, a Nemetschek Group company, has announced that Bluebeam Revu is now out for the Mac. The release will please tens of thousands of AEC professionals working both in the field and in the office on Apple’s popular mobile and desktop computers.

Bluebeam Revu for Mac Details

Bluebeam Inc., is the leading developer of PDF-based annotation and collaboration solutions for document-intensive technical industries such as architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) as well as manufacturing and other technical CAD-based industries. This is the first release of a native version of their award-winning software for the Mac.

Revu Mac delivers foundational PDF editing, markup, and collaboration capabilities for AEC professionals in particular, streamlining key functions and work processes across both Windows and Mac operating systems.

01 – Bluebeam Revu for Mac is now available, adding a critical tool component for AEC professionals on the Apple Mac platform.

Bluebeam’s Studio Platform is also now extended to the Mac, allowing project teams to work together on the same documents in real time. Highlights of Mac Rev include:

• Studio Projects — upload an unlimited number of PDFs and any other file types to the cloud and share Projects with project partners for simplified document management.
• Studio Sessions — invite attendees from anywhere in the world to view, chat and markup the same PDFs together in real time, regardless of Internet access. All session activity is tracked in a Record that links back to the PDF.
• Markup Tools — Calculate length, perimeter, area, and volume within drawings using Revu Mac’s measurement tools. The dynamic Markups list automatically calculates and tracks all related measurements to aid with estimations.
• Overlay Pages — Compare two or more PDFs, even if they are skewed or different sizes. Overlay Pages allows you to pick points for comparison and assign different colors to each page so you can visually see differences between each document. Overlay Pages is one of the most popular and useful tools in the construction industry.
• Document Navigation — with tabbed document navigation, easily switch between tabs, or view them in their own floating window. Revues MultiView™ technology allows you to split your screen up to sixteen times and sync tabs to pan and zoom in unison. Create hyper-links that jump to any page in the document, snapshot view or URL.
• Document Editing — Easily edit PDF content by adding, deleting, or rotating pages, combining multiple PDFs, or flattening your markups to make them a permanent part of the PDF. Users can even reduce the file size of documents to make them more suitable for email and sharing.

“Revu is about uniting teams through a common language of technology,” says Bluebeam president and CEO, Richard Lee. “By producing our first PDF solution for Mac, we are hoping to create a seamless user experience. Project teams can work how they’re used to, on their preferred hardware, while still collaborating on the same platform on the same documents. We’re excited to see how teams continue to leverage Revu and Studio to break down the barriers of what is possible with project communication.”

Revu Mac is available in English directly from Bluebeam and through a global network of Bluebeam Authorized Resellers on April 12, 2016. Localized versions of Revu Mac will launch before the end of the year.

For more information visit www.bluebeam.com

Architosh Analysis

A native Mac version of Bluebeam’s software has been literally years in the making. With Bluebeam being acquired by the Nemetschek Group in October of 2014, we noted in our analysis on that news that with some many Nemetschek Group customers—in Europe in particular—on the Mac platform, the native Mac version of Bluebeam Revu may come quicker. Atlas it is here, announced in the same week IDC announced Apple’s 4th place standing in the worldwide PC market share amidst the Windows market share’s continued decline.

MORE: Nemetschek AG Exec’s Talk Details of Bluebeam Acquisition with Architosh

With this new Mac version Bluebeam’s primary platform coverage now includes: Windows, Mac, and Apple iOS for iPad, for which it has had a mobile product for awhile now. It also supports Windows tablets.

Revu Mac doesn’t yet have feature parity with Revu on Windows. And features vary on the iPad version as well. While the company notes ongoing development will focus on such parity, for the moment key things not in the Mac version include native CAD plugins. We feel because of Bluebeam’s position in the Nemetschek Group, this will be a hot item to get accomplished for the Group’s new synergy directions announced this week as well. Under Sean Flaherty’s new direction as Chief Strategy Officer of the Nemetschek Group, one announced mandate is to help Nemetschek Group customers work “end-to-end” with Nemetschek Group solutions. Platform support and parity are necessary to prevent rival products from playing roles within workflows that Group company products are well suited for.

Prominently in this release, Revu Mac is a full member of the Bluebeam Studio collaboration workflow and can fully participate—as can iPad versions—with other team members on the Windows versions.