Studio Projects in Bluebeam Revu: document repository, permissions and revision history

Joana Alsasua devotes this technical seminar to one very specific part of Bluebeam Revu: Bluebeam Studio Projects. It is not a general demonstration of the program — for that the presenter refers you to the demonstrations — but a walkthrough of a little over forty minutes through the collaborative environment that Revu offers for safeguarding and coordinating the documentation of a construction project. The first part sets the context. Revu works on the open PDF standard, a format that can carry text, images, hyperlinks, bookmarks, attachments and metadata, and even geometry coming from BIM models and IFC files. On that basis, Studio adds the collaborative layer and is divided into two halves: sessions, intended for reviewing documents in real time across several teams, and projects, which are the subject of this session. A Studio project works as a document repository hosted on Bluebeam's servers, but with access control and traceability. It accepts any type of file — PDF, spreadsheets, images, IFC, text documents — although opening those that are not PDF requires the native application to be installed. The presenter creates a project from scratch, uploads a complete folder with its whole internal structure, invites a collaborator by means of the project's unique identifier, and works through the settings tab: general details, user management, access restriction and notifications. The permissions block occupies the centre of the session. The general permissions decide who can invite, manage users and upload documentation, and who is given full control. The folder permissions allow read only, read and modify, or read, modify and delete to be granted, and also allow a folder to be hidden entirely from certain users, so that they do not even know it exists. The final part shows the day-to-day workflow. A document opens locked and in read mode until someone reserves it with check out; while it is reserved, the rest of the team can see it but cannot edit it. When it is returned with check in, the modified copy is uploaded and a descriptive comment can be added to it. All of this feeds the revision history, which records who did what and when and makes it possible to open or restore an earlier version. The session closes with the option of sharing a document by a link with an expiry date and a password, and with questions from the audience, among them the connection between Revu and SharePoint.