,PDF Reader Software
- Thread starter Unbridled
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kwired
Electron manager
- Location
- NE Nebraska
Adobe Reader the free and most popular reader has highlighting and other annotation tools, but if your document is locked you may not be able to use some of those tools. Wouldn't be surprised if NFPA has their files locked.
luckylerado
Senior Member
- Location
- Lake of the Ozarks
:thumbsup:
- Location
- Illinois
- Occupation
- retired electrician
With Adobe Reader you can cut and paste, highlight and add comments to the PDF version of the 2017 code. I assume the same it true of the handbook version, but I have the code only version.
gadfly56
Senior Member
- Location
- New Jersey
- Occupation
- Professional Engineer, Fire & Life Safety
At $430 for a single seat it can be pricey depending on your use. I'm at an MEP firm now and they just got me set up for that. It is the cat's pajamas for doing markups.
gadfly56
Senior Member
- Location
- New Jersey
- Occupation
- Professional Engineer, Fire & Life Safety
What sold me is the ability to automatically flag the differences between two sets of PDF drawings.
So, you've got a 130 sheet fire alarm set. We'll call it "A". In BlueBeam you do a whole bunch of markups for the CAD group to process. Hundreds of changes. You save the marked up set, and we'll call that "A prime". CAD makes the changes and sends them back. We'll call that set "B". How do you figure out if all the markups got done and that something else didn't get changed in the bargain? Well, you set up a compare between "A" and "B". Bluebeam will automatically bubble all the differences between the two sets and create a comparison set. We'll call that "B prime". Now you sit down at your two-screen lashup and open "A prime" on one screen and "B prime" on the other. Scroll page by page and do a quick visual check to see if they got everything or not. It takes Bluebeam about 5 minutes or so to generate that comparison set. You can use the same process to compare PDF sets that someone else sends you to hunt down design changes that might affect your work.
I use PDF Exchange Editor by tracker software.
The free version will view.
The pay version will edit PDFs, split or add pages, and 100's more features I don't know about, use, or want to explain.
Use it for viewing, filling out, and editing PDF documents.
Don't like Adobe. Always want's to update. Want's to run in the background. Is slow to load. Full program is very costly.
The free version will view.
The pay version will edit PDFs, split or add pages, and 100's more features I don't know about, use, or want to explain.
Use it for viewing, filling out, and editing PDF documents.
Don't like Adobe. Always want's to update. Want's to run in the background. Is slow to load. Full program is very costly.
I have used the comparison clouds, but I like the comparison overlay better.
When you do the overlay, you get two layers, usually green and red for the different drawings.
Everything that is the same will be black and you can instantly see what has changed.
gadfly56
Senior Member
- Location
- New Jersey
- Occupation
- Professional Engineer, Fire & Life Safety
I.m trying the PDF X-change Editor. So far it seems to have all the fetures of Adobe and I believe I'm satifiied with.
I have yet to be able to search accuratly however. When I type an article # for example, it rarley takes me there. I think I need to explore th esearch options more.
Thanx for all responses.
:thumbsup:
For PDF searches it depends on the format of the original document.
Such as a scan of a document into a picture of words vs the actual character typed in.
Some scan software that has OCR that converts the scan into actual characters.
There is also software that can do the conversion after the fact.
It comes with some printers.
You may try searching for a OCR program to supplement the tracker PDF.
https://www.tracker-software.com/knowledgebase/351-How-do-I-OCR-a-document
It looks like Adobie Acobat has a OCR capability built in.
No matter which direction you go there are drawbacks with using OCR programs.
They loose the format / form settings and could change the letters wrong.
An OCR takes pictures and tries to turn them back into words.
Such as a scan of a document into a picture of words vs the actual character typed in.
Some scan software that has OCR that converts the scan into actual characters.
There is also software that can do the conversion after the fact.
It comes with some printers.
You may try searching for a OCR program to supplement the tracker PDF.
https://www.tracker-software.com/knowledgebase/351-How-do-I-OCR-a-document
It looks like Adobie Acobat has a OCR capability built in.
No matter which direction you go there are drawbacks with using OCR programs.
They loose the format / form settings and could change the letters wrong.
An OCR takes pictures and tries to turn them back into words.
brantmacga
Señor Member
- Location
- Georgia
- Occupation
- Former Child
I've tried several, and ended up sticking with adobe and the document cloud subscription. The document cloud subscription gives you additional features on iOS devices that are useful. I recently started using the OCR features of acrobat on my phone instead of Microsoft lens.
I use Bluebeam also for marking up PDF drawings, but I use acrobat for all document editing, especially bid proposals where I need to do some additional formatting that my bid software doesn't do quite the way I want. I use it almost every day.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I use Bluebeam also for marking up PDF drawings, but I use acrobat for all document editing, especially bid proposals where I need to do some additional formatting that my bid software doesn't do quite the way I want. I use it almost every day.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Fulthrotl
~Autocorrect is My Worst Enema.~
- Occupation
- E
i use adobe acrobat pro XI.
i've never seen bluebeam, but that sounds awesome.
acrobat pro on sale was $450 when i bought it, so bluebeam is fair market priced, imho.
acrobat will do ocr, and it's pretty awesome. today i did 200 pages of screenshots.
works like a charm. no errors i've found so far.
thing with acrobat pro, well, there isn't much it can't do, and most everything
else can read it. not every pdf editor can make an edit that is readable everywhere.
Well after 2 weeks of using PDF Exchange Editor by tracker software, I am very satisfied. I'm using the free edition and it is allowing me all of the Mark-up tools I'll ever need, including Clouds and Remarks with-in the cloud. I've read all your comments and PDF Exchange Editor by tracker software wins. Not only is it free, but it converts TXT and DOCX documents into PDF. I have also tweaked the search engine to got to the exact article / word I ask for.
Thanx for all your Help :thumbsup:
I use Bluebeam for all of my PDF editing as well as drawing management.
Bluebeam also has a visual search.
brantmacga
Señor Member
- Location
- Georgia
- Occupation
- Former Child
Bluebeam probably has a ton of features I've never taken the time to learn. I got it specifically for drawing markups when I can't get the CAD files.
I used it recently to make E-sheets for a design/build project where the architect ONLY does HAND DRAWN blueprints. They don't even scan them into a PDF format; instead they mail you a copy of drawings. Any architectural changes have to be re-drawn and mailed back out. Blew my mind.
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gadfly56
Senior Member
- Location
- New Jersey
- Occupation
- Professional Engineer, Fire & Life Safety
What's the architect's address? Jurassic Park??
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