In Bluebeam Revu 2018 and 2019, you are able to compare differences between two similar documents. For example, you can compare what changes have occurred between an original drawing and a revision. Revu makes this easy; instead of having to look back and forth between the two documents, you can use the Compare Documents tool, which scans the two documents and either overlays them and dims the original document, leaving the changes from the revision at their normal opacity, or highlights the changes using the cloud tool. This article will show you the basics of using the Compare Documents tool, with examples using the 64x Bluebeam Revu 2018 eXtreme edition.

With Revu open, navigate to the document dropdown menu and select ‘Compare Documents’ to launch the tool.

A dialogue box will open with an input for document ‘A’ and document ‘B,’ an output location for a document that highlights the differences which the tool will create, options for aligning the two documents, and other options for how the comparison will be presented. To select two documents to compare, select the ellipses next to each of the document input options, and use Windows file explorer to make selections. The field below the document input options allows you to select a page or range of pages to compare. Use the drop-down arrow to make a selection. Since I am comparing documents that each have only one page I will keep the default selection.

Choose an output destination for the comparison document by selecting the ellipses next to the output folder field, and using Windows file explorer.  

If the documents you are comparing are different sizes, you can manually align portions of the documents to compare, either by using ‘select window,’ which allows you to select a window on each document, or ‘pick points,’ which allows you to pick three points on each document to align them.

The ‘other options’ section allows you to choose different presentation options and comparison type profiles. You can view the documents in split screen mode, and you can dim the original document and highlight changes. You between three default comparison profiles, Printed Documents (different printer), Printed Documents (same printer), and Scanned Documents.

You can adjust or make your own comparison type profile by selecting ‘Advanced…’ at the bottom of the dialogue box. You can adjust how Revu scans the documents, the rendering of the output document, and choose how markups dealt with.

Once you have made your selections, select OK at the bottom of the dialogue box to perform the comparison.

Once the Compare Documents tool has finished its comparison, the output document will be created and your documents will either be loaded into one tab and your screen will be split, or the documents will be loaded into separate tabs depending on your selections.

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