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Alternatives to Preview.app on Mac OS


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Bluebeam Revu Mac - I've used the PC version for years in a PC-based architectural office, and I've only recently started using the Mac version- which is almost as good. It makes redlining shop drawings much easier than using Acrobat Pro or Preview. They offer a full-function 30-day free trial.

 

For me it took some time to try and remember on which toolbar were the tools that I wanted, but once I learned the basic keyboard shortcuts it became much easier.

Edited by rDesign
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16 minutes ago, zoomer said:

My problem with Preview App is only that it is so slow for typical PDF plans.

Does this work smooth with Revu ?

Can it also display 3D PDFs ?

 

I have not had any display slowness viewing PDFs with Revu Mac, but I have only been using it several weeks on some shop drawings so they were not huge PDF files.

 

The Mac version of Revu does not have the ability to view or markup 3D PDFs (whereas the PC versions can). I have never used a 3D PDF so this was not an issue for me personally.

 

Since they do offer a free trial there's nothing to lose by trying it out to see if it meets most of your needs (other than no 3D PDFs on Revu Mac).

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On 13/01/2017 at 8:40 PM, Christiaan said:

I've finally had it, I've given up on thinking Apple will ever fix Preview.app.

Yup. They have had a roasting on this recently. Trying to unify the core code of their OSes. Released way before it was ready.

 

I use occasionally use PDF Pen for OCR and markup. Great for working with text. Can convert PDF to Word for editing and back to PDF. Both on Mac and iOS.

 

But for detail sketching, marking up drawings, site measure, note taking and document signing – by far my favourite is Notability. Great on both iPad and Mac. Can also record meeting audio.

 

See image below of a old detail sketch for a structural engineer.

 

Balustrade Details.jpg

 

Edited by Diamond
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22 minutes ago, SamIWas said:

Preview has become unusable for CAD PDF viewing.  SO slow.

 

I don't get what the problem really is, Preview App works well on everyday use with

PDFs and large amounts of highres Images.

Just typical plans and elevations wit a certain amount of details and especially landscape plans

from VW users, likely containing additional teaser images are extremely slow.

 

It feels like old times when you had too few RAM and it needed to swap to HDD or some kind of

single threaded or 32 bit only behavior, in fact even slower.

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