This story was originally published by FRANK KALMAN on the Bluebeam Blog.

Despite the temptation to implement new technology quickly, it’s important that there are practices in place to ensure the tool is evolving in the long run.

ost construction industry leaders would likely agree that implementing new technology can be a complicated process.

From identifying pain points to researching possible solutions to going about the lengthy process to test and implement the new technology, the process can be painstaking—even though such efforts have largely gotten relatively easier and more accessible recently.

Still, it’s important for construction leaders to remember that any new technology implementation is a marathon, not a sprint.

While many focus on the initial dash to become operational on new technology, it’s critical to account for long-term considerations. Even once the initial phase of implementation is complete, seemingly solving the problem, it’s worth maintaining a continuous-improvement approach.

Here are six things construction leaders can do to ensure they’re taking the long view when implementing new technology.

Make training continuous

It’s easy to focus on the initial implementation training when installing a new technology. Construction leaders have by this point spent months (or even years) researching the new tool and orchestrating its implementation.

Yet, there are several reasons why training should be designed as a continuous, long-term process.

No matter how well-designed your initial technology implementation training may be, people aren’t likely to retain it all the first time around. Often when taking on new technology, people don’t know what they don’t know—so they retain what’s taught to them just to get by, without fully realizing the context of the tool.

Revisiting concepts taught in the initial training may be helpful several months after the implementation training. Then, as time passes, additional ongoing training should take place about new features and tools.

Appoint technology champion(s)

It’s likely that the initial technology implementation featured a leader or group of leaders responsible for the complex process of overseeing the effort and all its components. This leadership structure should persist long past the initial implementation.

Depending on the size of your company or team taking on the new technology, this can be one person or several people. A large municipal department, for instance, may appoint a council of strategic advisors to oversee and maintain the long-term efforts associated with new technology implementation.

These people should meet regularly to craft new training and other initiatives to ensure that the technology’s use is progressing. They should also come from different divisions or disciplines across a company to ensure every perspective is represented.

Initiate internal user groups

A great way to embrace a continuous-improvement approach to a new construction technology implementation is to form an internal user group. This group is designed to meet regularly to share knowledge of the new technology and explore new possibilities of how the tool can be used.

Perhaps the best way to make these groups effective is to make them social as well. Have them meet after working hours so they feel more informal and community-oriented, rather than just another meeting during the workday.

Devise external knowledge sharing

Equally as critical may be coming up with ways for external knowledge sharing on new technology. While internal user groups are tremendously effective in expanding a company’s use of new technology over the long term, it’s important that construction firms have a way to bring in external knowledge, too.

Attending or organizing industry events on new technology, or starting one that brings in like-minded users from other organizations, are all ways to channel external knowledge that will pay dividends long into the future.

Conduct regular technology audits

No matter how long a tool has been in place and how knowledgeable people may be on it, construction leaders should get into the habit of conducting regular, formal audits on the technology. Whether you bring in an outside group to conduct the audit or use your internal technology leadership team, doing this ensures that the technology remains effective at improving your firm’s efficiency and solving new problems that arise over time.

Embrace failure

Don’t worry if everything isn’t perfect. New technology implementations can be messy. Try to embrace the small failures that will inevitably come, allowing you to iterate to ultimately maximize the value of the new technology. After all, such failures are often the best learning opportunities.

 

This story was originally published by FRANK KALMAN on the Bluebeam Blog.

Bluebeam’s dexterity as a construction technology makes it invaluable to the industry, but standardizing its tools and features to specific job roles or workflows makes it even more valuable.

Standardization is paramount in construction. Whether you’re a superintendent on a multibillion-dollar skyscraper project or an estimator on a mixed-use development, every industry player needs to abide by a set of standards to get the job done.

Using construction technology is no different. As digital collaboration tools continue to play an outsized role in the industry, it’s critical that those who are leading technology implementations customize the tools so workers can learn them quickly and apply them on the job effectively.

Perhaps no construction technology benefits more from standardization than Bluebeam. The tool’s pliability is one of its greatest strengths. Here’s how to apply standards to Bluebeam so you can get the most out of the technology.

Simplify what you see 

Construction is a complex industry. Any given job may have more than 100 different types of roles, from the general contractor overseeing the production of a build, to the architects and engineers determining a project’s fine details, to the electrician carrying out those details.

Bluebeam is designed to help all of these people do their jobs better. Still, its capabilities are so robust that any first-time user might become overwhelmed. Therefore, it’s critical that, upon implementation, Bluebeam is customized with standards that are specific not just to each role but any particular workflows as well.

The best way to do this is to eliminate anything that’s unnecessary in Bluebeam’s interface. If you don’t need to create forms in Bluebeam, for example, scrap the icons and buttons to remove them from view. Repeat this with any other unneeded tools, panels or capabilities.

Create Custom Profiles, Tool Sets, Icons, Etc. 

Revu, Bluebeam’s flagship PDF markup tool, has a seemingly endless amount of features. One way to completely customize Revu to better serve a job role or workflow is to save specific interface settings as a Profile, which can then be shared with other project colleagues.

Watch the video here https://youtu.be/RswYZRTXsVM

By creating custom Profiles, users can re-order and even turn off any of the interface’s panels and tools, ensuring that only the most used and relevant tools are in view. Users can do the same with the toolbars within Revu. Standardizing workspaces in Bluebeam with custom Profiles, and sharing those Profiles across teams, will go a long way toward simplifying the overall experience of using the technology.

Customization doesn’t stop with Profiles in Bluebeam. Markup tools—the symbols that are saved in the Tool Chest—can also be standardized as a custom tool set. Moreover, users can upload their own markup icons to standardize for use in a specific project or workflow.

Like with Profiles, implementation leaders should take advantage of such customization. From tool sets to specific markup icons, create a standardized experience in Bluebeam for your team that is as specific and simple as possible.

Review standards often

While establishing standards in Bluebeam is essential at the beginning of the tool’s implementation, it’s equally important that custom elements—from Profiles to tool sets—are reviewed and updated regularly.

Bluebeam is like a fine wine—it gets better with time. As knowledge of Bluebeam expands as people on your team continue to use it, it’s worthwhile to potentially integrate new tools and features as part of your customized standards.

Review these standards on an informal level every quarter, while larger, more robust standardization updates should happen once every six months to a year. Use these opportunities to gain feedback from users on which standards should be updated or eliminated.

The bottom line

Bluebeam’s versatility as a construction technology makes it invaluable to the industry. But with such flexibility comes the need to customize it for specific types of users and workflows. Failing to set standards when using Bluebeam—or any construction technology—risks slowing down the tool’s adoption and overall effectiveness over time.

 

This story was originally published by  CHRIS GRAHAM on the Bluebeam Blog.

As a structural engineer, I draw a lot of details and lay out a lot of plans. This means a lot of repetitive objects get drawn. How many times can you draw a 4×4 post or a beam hanger before enough is enough?

Thankfully, Bluebeam’s Tool Chest feature allows me to store and organize pre-drawn objects and groups into a tab for later use. If you have an object or group that you want to save for later, then right click it and select “Add to Tool Chest,” then select what folder to save it into. By default, there are some folders already for the general storage of saved objects. The “My Tools” folder is for creating custom hotkeys.

Folder management

To access the Tool Chest tab, click the Tool Chest tab icon, which looks like this:

Or press alt + x. At the top of the tab next to Tool Chest, click the downward caret symbol and select “Manage Tool Sets.” Within this new menu, you can add, delete, re-order, modify, import and export folders. If you’re just starting out, then you’re likely happy with just the default folders for now.

There are two ways to view the folders, which can be toggled by clicking the gear symbol to the right of the folder name within the Tool Chest tab and selecting either “Symbol” or “Detail.” Within the “Detail” option, you can rename the objects, which names can be seen when mousing over the symbols. You can modify the color and layer of objects within the folders by right clicking them and selecting the appropriate option.

Adding to the Tool Chest

Right click an object and select “Add to Tool Chest,” then select the subfolder. If you have a group of objects to save, first select all of the objects and then press ctrl + g or right click an object to be grouped and select “Group.” Then save it into the Tool Chest the same way as a single object. You can rearrange the order of the saved objects within the folder by dragging them around.

Using saved objects

You can bring a saved object into a document by clicking it within the folder and then clicking within the document. There are some advanced features such as sequencing, quantity legend and actions, among others, that are a topic for another time. If your “Reuse Markup Tools” feature from the F8 menu is enabled, it will continue putting in objects until you press escape or right click.

This story was originally published BY TROY DEGROOT on the Bluebeam Blog.

Let’s do a quick flashback to show a feature in Bluebeam Revu you might not be aware of, although it’s been around for several years.

One of my favorite releases of Revu came in 2017, when the company’s developers introduced several enhanced measurement tools allowing intelligent material takeoff workflows. How great is it when you can simply highlight the length of a beam and it automatically calculates and provides totals? Or using Dynamic Fill to find area measurements by pouring paint on a floorplan to fill the room or space?

My all-time favorite feature, however, is Quantity Link.

With this tool, Revu users are able to link Microsoft Excel files directly to the markups in a PDF drawing. As you might already know, the totals in Revu are calculated in the Markups List. Quantity Link, however, takes the information a little further. As you measure materials in Revu, the measurement or quantity totals are simultaneously updating in the connected Excel spreadsheet.

What exactly does that mean? Here are the top five benefits of using Quantity Link in your workflows.

Presentations: Whether you’re a developer presenting to a city or a city presenting to the public, visual, numerical data can be extremely important. When creating land use presentations for a new development, you can have your visual graphs update automatically, painting a clear picture of design intent.

Legacy Spreadsheets: Most specialty contractors have an existing spreadsheet they use for estimates. Those spreadsheets are one of the reasons you’re successful; why give them up when you can connect them to markups in Revu? Even if the spreadsheets aren’t rich with formulas, they can be created to match the requirements of your estimating software, allowing you to simply import.

Easily Update Revisions: Once you have all your markups in place collecting quantities, it’s really easy to simply update the existing markups when a revision comes in rather than starting over. With features like Document Compare and Overlay Pages, Revu will pinpoint exactly where changes were made so you can instantly update your markup and the spreadsheet at the same time. This also paints a pretty good picture for scope creep, justifying additional materials, schedule changes and labor.

This story was originally published BY MIKE LANDERS on the Bluebeam Blog.

Deepak Maini, a 20-year qualified mechanical engineer, shares tips and tricks for using QTO software (From 2019)

Watch the video here.

Upon buying a home many years ago, a homeowner provided the contractor with a PDF for wooden flooring installation. The contractor vowed to take off the quantities, but also required a home visit so they could do an onsite measurement check as well.

Baffled, the homeowner questioned the firm as to why the home visit was needed. The explanation: “You’ll see when we get there.”

The firm measured on-site and found out that its takeoffs were 22% more than the initial estimate.

“I realized that they didn’t have the right tools,” the homeowner said. “Had I known about Revu back then, I would have told them, ‘You are not only wasting your time, you’re also wasting my time. If you use this tool, you’ll be a lot more accurate.’”

That homeowner was Deepak Maini, a 20-year qualified mechanical engineer who not only knows about Bluebeam Revu now, but swears by it for accurate quantity takeoffs.

Now a national technical manager at Cadgroup Australia, Deepak strongly advocates for the use of Revu to accomplish accurate quantity takeoffs. Using the digital tools in Revu helps to avoid costly mistakes from paper-generated processes, especially when dealing with large or complex projects.

Deepak’s QTO Tips and Tricks in Revu

• Calibrate the PDF – Don’t rely on the drawings to be in proper scale. This process ensures that your measurements are accurate.
• Create Custom tool sets – Align all project collaborators by creating and deploying a tool set for takeoffs that can be used and standardized throughout your company and on future projects.
• Use Custom Columns – Why not have an immediate cost breakdown? Columns in the Markups List are highly customizable. With values plugged into your Custom Columns, users can instantly see the materials and price estimates.
• Use VisualSearch – Using this feature, you can find the total count of light fixtures or electrical outlets quickly within your entire bid package by using Revu to search for a visual cue or object.

Calibrate the PDF

“You don’t always know whether those sheets have been printed to the right scale or not,” Deepak said. “Calibration ensures that we use the right scale and we get the right measurements.”

Revu includes automatic prompts for setting scale and can calibrate a PDF to a single scale or to separate X and Y scales as needed, as well as setting multiple measurement scales on the same PDF using viewports. “When it comes to taking off regions and areas and so on, it’s got some really smart tools that let you snap onto the corner points of the areas and you can really easily take off those quantities,” Deepak added.

Custom tool sets

Taking off building quantities can be a repetitive process, and if you have multiple people working on several bid packages at once, having a standard set of tools makes work consistent and efficient among everyone. Markups, like colored hatch patterns, and symbols, like lighting fixtures, can be saved as a custom tool set in Revu and even shared with other users.

This story was originally published BY FRANK KALMAN on the Bluebeam Blog.

Cities and municipalities transitioning their plan check process from paper to digital have a lot to look forward to.

Moving the paper-based process of reviewing and approving plan documents for local-area building projects can improve your efficiency in the digital era. But that doesn’t mean making the transition from paper to digital is always easy. There are many considerations—some of them not so obvious—that need to be taken into account when moving the plan review process from paper to digital using Bluebeam.

Whether approving plans for a single-family home or a robust, skyline-defining high-rise skyscraper, there are several process-oriented tips cities should follow to ensure a smooth transition to digital.

Here are four things cities and municipalities would be wise to consider as they undergo their paper-to-digital plan check transformations.

Appoint a leader

No matter the size of your city or municipality plan check review team, it’s critical when preparing to undergo a paper-to-digital transformation with Bluebeam that there is someone on the team leading the effort internally. This person, typically someone who has at least modest experience using Bluebeam, will act as the liaison between the city or municipality and the Bluebeam implementation team.

Channeling communication through an internal point person will alleviate potential blockers in the process of getting the rest of the team up to speed on using Bluebeam. It will also help other team members have an internal “expert” to go to when minor questions arise.

Consider process, not just software

Bluebeam Revu is an extremely malleable software that users can customize to suit their specific needs. So when preparing to use Bluebeam to transition a city’s plan check review process to digital, it’s important to consider the workflow first and then how Revu fits in it.

Luckily, Bluebeam’s professional services team can help customize Revu for each city’s particular workflow. Preparing documents ahead of the official review cycle in Revu—through software features like page labels, OCR and batch link, as well as setting up a Studio Session—can make the broader transition much easier to digest.

Simplify transition

Change is hard. From comfort level with technology to experience with digital tools, every team member is going to approach digitization differently. That’s why cities and municipalities that are going digital with their plan review process should work to simplify the process using Revu as much as possible. Start small by focusing on the easy wins that benefit the entire team. Once their knowledge of Revu expands, add more in-depth elements.

Begin with features like Profiles and Tool Sets in Revu to customize and standardize the review workflow process, making it as easy as possible for those involved.

With Profiles, cities and municipalities can eliminate toolbars and panel icons in Revu that won’t be needed. This keeps Revu’s interface simple and clean, and easier to use for team members and collaborators.

Tool Sets give the ability to create custom tools in Revu for each department that is reviewing documents, even using different colors to distinguish each department’s tools. Additionally, you can create tools in Revu that contain commonly used comments; this way each user doesn’t need to manually type them in every time.

Think beyond initial training

When it comes to learning Bluebeam Revu, process is just as important as training—and this applies to cities and municipalities embracing Revu for plan check as well.

Indeed, eventually team members will receive the training they need to use the software, but an equally important consideration when initially implementing it is the high-level process, or workflow, that the team needs the software to exist under.

How does the ideal plan check review process work? What stakeholders are involved? What sorts of reviews or markups are they conducting? What approval stamps need to be digitized? The Bluebeam professional services team can help you work out these questions and develop a process that meets your team’s specific needs.

Looking forward

No matter where cities are in their digital review journey, there are always industry consultants at Bluebeam available to help ease the transition. Revu is a powerful, comprehensive tool for the full spectrum of users across the architecture, engineering and construction industry. But that doesn’t mean that implementing Revu for the highly specific needs of a municipal plan check process needs to use the full scope of the software’s capabilities.

Simplifying Revu’s tools and streamlining how it’s used in a workflow will ensure that the transition from paper to digital is as beneficial—and easy—as possible.

This story was originally published BY CHRIS GRAHAM on the Bluebeam Blog.

Bluebeam Revu has a variety of built-in features, including a comprehensive markup tool palette. You can draw elliptical curves, lines, polylines, rectangles, text boxes, arrows, highlights, hatches, polygons and combinations thereof. You can even store custom grouped objects into the custom Tool Chest tab for later use.

For many, you have your default markups just the way you like them, and even have populated your Tool Chest tab. You feel that you’re proficient with Bluebeam Revu’s markup tools, but some things inevitably feel more cumbersome than good old pen and paper.

Have you ever drawn an object for the umpteenth time and just wished that you could somehow have multiple default settings for a markup that you could easily switch between?

For example, I often draw a callout (default hot key: “q”) that has red-colored 12-point font with no line around the text box. I also often draw blue callouts with 20-point font and a 1.0 point line weight around the text box. I have the red callout variant as my default, but I use the blue variant so often that it could just as well be my default.

For a long time, I reformatted each (default) red callout into a blue callout or copied a blue callout where needed. Thus, for each callout, I had to adjust the line color, text color, line thickness and font size. For those keeping score at home, that means I had to press the hot key, click and drag and then use seven clicks and some typing to reformat the callout.

This is about nine times slower than just using the default formatting. If I had a genie that gave me three wishes, and I wasn’t allowed to use any for client management, I think I’d use all three wishes to create my own custom Bluebeam Revu hot keys.

As it turns out, Bluebeam Revu has granted you many more than three wishes for precisely that!

Users of the Tool Chest tab will notice that there is a default partition called “My Tools.”

When you open the Tool Chest Panel (default hotkey: “Alt + X”), you will see My Tools at the top. The My Tools Tool Set is a configurable collection of frequently used tools that you can easily access. It has a few special properties you should be aware of:

• Tools in the My Tools Tool Set are automatically assigned hot keys for quick access
• The hot keys are numeric, according to the tool’s positioning in the My Tools tool set (its hot key is shown in the upper right corner of its icon)
• You can click and drag to change a tool’s position, which will automatically change its associated hot key

Now, let’s relate back to my callout formatting quandary above. I can keep my “q” hot key as the red variant by default—so far, so good. Then, I can format a blue variant callout to my liking, right click on it, mouse over “Add to Tool Chest,” and then select “My Tools.”

This places my customized markup at the end of the list in My Tools. Click and drag to place this newly added markup in the first position and the hot key labels will update automatically. You may now press “1” to select and be able to place an identical copy of this markup.

This story was originally published by TRACIE SANIM on the Bluebeam Blog.

COVID-19 has forced many workplaces to embrace remote working. However, for some employers, working from home and self-isolation directives could potentially devastate business viability. Developing and enabling work-from-home opportunities has come with distinct challenges, particularly as many employers are exploring this territory for the first time. While frameworks, policies and procedures can be developed through a logic-based approach, ensuring your workforce is productive and motivated can be more challenging.

The rise of remote working in the construction industry

Global consulting firm McKinsey believes hybrid working arrangements will continue beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. Australian workers have demonstrated this in their widespread exodus from capital cities. 

In its paper titled “What’s next for remote work: An analysis of 2,000 tasks, 800 jobs, and nine countries,” the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that about 1 in 5 members of the Australian construction workforce could work between three and five days remotely each week.

The opportunity to work remotely depends on various factors, including the nature of particular occupations. The varied roles in the industry mean companies may need to tailor policies to suit different job functions. For example, marketers may more easily achieve a hybrid or full-time work-from-home arrangement, while tradespeople will be required on-site.

New technologies and digital connectivity are imperative to bridge the divide between team members and the functions of the business, not only to achieve tasks but as part of a broader focus on maintaining and improving motivation and productivity.

Factors that can affect employee motivation and productivity

Whether working on-site or remotely, workplace culture is central to your team’s performance, and positive organizational culture begins with leadership. The relationships between managers and their team is a significant driver of workplace satisfaction, alongside meaningful work.

“Motivation depends on balancing what is meaningful with what is manageable.” – Adam Grant.

The mismatch between what science knows and what business does – predominantly focusing on rewards and punishment in terms of workplace motivation – has been researched for decades. Consistently, research has revealed that instead of the carrot and stick approach, the building blocks of an engaged and productive workforce should focus on opportunities to embed intrinsic motivation.

While we may choose roles for professional opportunity and economic reward, our performance is driven by organizational culture and commitment to autonomy, mastery and purpose. Working with a manager who does not communicate well or offer clarity or with a team who doesn’t believe in the end goal is demoralizing and can lead to poor performance. Simple issues, such as inadequate tools or a lack of technology, also act as roadblocks to performance and motivation.

Tips for keeping remote teams motivated and productive

With today’s teams increasingly dispersed, developing and implementing ways to maintain and build motivation and productivity is more important than ever.

Our top ways to future-proof your workforce include:

1. Prioritize team collaboration and connection

Collaboration and connection begin at a leadership level. If you build this into your immediate reporting structure, the effect will cascade throughout other teams.

Embed both informal and formal collaboration into regular team meetings. To foster collaboration and participation, each team member could take turns leading weekly catch-ups.

Factor in opportunities to brainstorm challenges and lead by example. Bringing a problem to the table for the team to solve encourages lateral thinking and teamwork and demonstrates you value your team members’ contributions.

2. Build relationships with your team members

If you have a reputation for being hard to reach in the office and an arm’s-length boss, you will find it difficult to establish good relationships when managing from a distance. Good leaders understand and demonstrate good communication, including building rapport, listening, and clearly articulating goals and expectations.

Regular one-on-ones with team members, including informal chats and task-specific meetings, break down barriers and build trust and communication. The greater the level of trust, the more likely it is that your team members will be proactive in picking up the phone or sending an email when a challenging problem or potential opportunity lands on their desk. Such trust also means team members have greater confidence in using initiative and taking the lead in progressing work and adding value to their project.

Create opportunities for team members to work outside their core scope to grow their expertise and contributions. This can help support succession planning and improve staff loyalty and retention.

3. Arm your team with the tools they need to collaborate and build performance.

“Give ordinary people the right tools, and they will design and build the most extraordinary things.” – Neil Gershenfeld

There are many tools ready to be tapped into to build motivation and productivity across teams. Some will be role-specific – such as Asana for collaborating across the business and Xero for accounting. The whole organization can collectively use other generic tools – for instance, Zoom and Microsoft Office’s cloud-based 365.

Industry-specific tools are critical for construction businesses seeking to build a diverse workforce that supports remote team members. This includes tools such as Revu that enhance sharing information in real-time, keeping teams on the same page through the design process.

4. Recognize and celebrate success

Most team members contribute their expertise as part of a much bigger job or project. Keeping the team in the loop of the project’s progression, completion and success helps them stay connected to the bigger picture while building a sense of belonging and achievement. Sharing outcomes and lessons learned also helps build improvements in the future.

Remote team members are valued contributors to all teams. Ensuring you find ways to connect them to the broader team and embedding in practices to motivate and engage your people will deliver better outcomes for your business as a whole.

Motivation is not a one-size-fits-all approach. And for the construction industry, it’s critical to understand the purpose of your approach and how it will enhance outcomes. This is central to your strategy to ensure your staff feels connected and valued and that your business uses tools to streamline work and improve collaboration.

This story was originally published by CHRIS GRAHAM on the Bluebeam Blog.

Imagine pointing to an entire folder and subfolders of drawings and bringing the section cuts, elevations and plan notes to life (from 2021).

One of the most challenging objectives when transitioning from paper documents to digital is overcoming the comfort we developed flipping through a set of physical drawings. There’s just something intuitive about keeping a finger on the plan sheet while you quickly jump back and forth looking at the sections or detail sheets.

After all, our fingers have been saving pages since we were first introduced to coloring books as children. It can also be difficult to navigate through digital plan sets if they are not created properly.

In addition to using AutoMark to update digital page labels, possibly the most powerful tool to ease document navigation is Batch Hyperlink in Bluebeam Revu. I’m always excited to show this to experienced users who don’t know this tool exists. To be fair, it is only available in the Extreme version of Bluebeam Revu. If you have Revu Extreme and don’t know about Batch Hyperlink, get ready for an eye opener!

So, what is Batch Hyperlink and what does it do? Imagine pointing to an entire folder and subfolders of drawings and bringing the section cuts, elevations and plan notes to life. When you’re looking at a plan and want to look at a section cut on a different sheet, you simply click on it and you’re there.

You can use the Previous View Button to quickly jump back to the plan sheet.

You don’t even have to place your finger on those pages. Remember those times you thought, “If I only had a few more fingers?”

As a bonus, if your cover sheet has a Sheet Index, you’ll notice that it has come alive with links to every page in the set.

 

If you work with small-format fabrication drawings where the drawing number is actually the piece mark number, you could also use Batch Hyperlink. In the case of steel fabrication, you might have 11×17 drawings with a mark number and bill of materials.

All these assembly mark numbers are then referenced on an erection plan or elevation. Revu will find those mark numbers as if they are section cuts and connect each piece on the plan to the sheet with the fabrication drawing.

As with every tool in Bluebeam Revu, there are several creative ways to use Batch Hyperlink.