How to Set Multiple Scales on the Same PDF Drawing

Summary

Best practices for setting up multiple scales (calibrations) on a single page of a PDF drawing.

Relevant Products

Bluebeam Revu

The Viewports section of the Measurement tab allows you to create viewports with various scalar calibrations. This allows you to define different areas (via the viewports) which each have different effective scales, and all measurement markups drawn within these viewports will adhere to that viewport’s specific scaling.

• On the View menu, hover over Tabs, then click Measurements. Or use keyboard shortcut Alt+M.
• In the Viewports section, click the Add button to define a viewport.
• Click OK on the pop-up window, and click and drag to draw out a rectangle on the PDF to define the area for the new viewport.
• Type a name for the viewport, then click OK.
• Click the Calibrate button in the Viewports section of the Measurement tab to calibrate a new scale for the viewport, or manually enter the values for the new scale directly into the Viewports section of the tab.
• Select a viewport in the list and then click the red X button to delete a viewport. Click the Clear All button to delete all of the existing viewports (Only in version 8 and above.).

Note: The existence of unnecessary viewports may adversely affect measurement markups. For example, if you’re drawing a Length measurement in “feet and inches,” but the annotation appears in decimal format, then it’s quite possible there are existing viewports in the PDF which are affecting the measurement.

These viewports can be deleted from the PDF via the Measurements tab as well.