ActiveDraft, of Freemont, California, has announced its new PDF markup and document collaboration tools for the AEC/O industry. These tools aim to transform the way construction industry professionals collaborate on construction documents.
Built on an excellent PDF technology stack that directly challenges Adobe Acrobat, ActiveDraft aims to bridge the gap in construction document collaboration.
Autodesk and Adobe Veterans
ActiveDraft is a new startup in the AEC/O industry space led by two Adobe and Autodesk veterans, including Michael Folkers, Vice President and GM, and Tom Jackson, Vice President of Product. Folkers spent a decade at Adobe focused on Acrobat solutions and is a former product line manager for AutoCAD at Autodesk. Jackson was also at Autodesk but prior to his recent 11 years at Adobe.
Screenshot of ActiveDraft, a new AEC/O industry PDF markup and document collaboration tool that is web-browser based.
Described as “Canva for PDF markup,” ActiveDraft provides architects, engineers, and construction professionals with a highly efficient and easy-to-use set of tools, all in the browser.
“Teams with varying degrees of tech proficiency, spread across multiple locations, make construction collaboration particularly difficult,” said Michael Folkers, VP & GM of Activedraft.
“Our ActiveLink technology delivers intuitive markup for disparate teams, ensuring collaboration is always just a link away.”
ActiveDraft Details
At Architosh, we gave ActiveDraft a brief little spin and were quite impressed. It’s markup abilities via a browser were already surpassing some of the markup capabilities of Bluebeam Cloud. (see Analysis section below). You can scale drawings you upload so your dimensional work is accurate. Also:
- Trigger Instant Real-Time Collaboration with colleagues via a simple drag-and-drop and share via ActiveLink technology.
- Contextual PDF Markups let you set assignments to specific markups, anchoring discussion in a visual context.
- Universal Access — Because the solution is web browser-based, team members, colleagues and project stakeholders can access document management and markup workflows from any computer system (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc) that runs a modern web browser.
The solution also features threaded discussions, assignments, and an audit trail a la Bluebeam style at the lower bottom of the application.
To learn more, visit them here. There is a free tier to try out the solution.
Architosh Analysis and Discussion
Ever since Bluebeam abandoned the Mac platform, legions of AEC/O professionals have been left without a replacement for PDF document markup. While Bluebeam Cloud offers markup via the web browser, a comparison of that solution to ActiveDraft offers revealing insights.
For example. ActiveDraft has the ability to get things set to scale but doesn’t rely on scaling between known points. This is both good and bad. If you upload a drawing that isn’t perfectly set to scale out of the print to PDF or export to PDF process, then you will miss scaling between known points. However, Bluebeam Cloud doesn’t offer any scaling at the moment. However, what it does offer is the ability to download your document once the markup process is complete. ActiveDraft does not yet support downloading documents once markup has taken place. Markups in ActiveDraft appear to exist only in the cloud platform.
ActiveDraft is totally new and just getting started, so new features will surely be added in the months and years ahead. The good news is that AEC/O industry professionals now have a second PDF-based markup and document collaboration solution, and competition is always good for the end user.