Drawing markup software for macOS

The mark vocabulary a drawing expects

Reviewers read shape before text. A revision cloud means “look here”; an arrow means “this is what I mean”; a rectangle or ellipse isolates a component; a highlight draws the eye along a run. Text carries the instruction, and a status stamp carries the state of the sheet. Lines and freehand exist for the cases the shapes cannot express — a route through a riser, a note pointing at a hidden junction.

All of these are in the app: cloud, rectangle, ellipse, arrow, line, freehand, text, highlight and a status stamp, each sitting on a layer above the drawing. The keyboard does what a Mac keyboard should — ⌘Z and ⇧⌘Z for undo and redo — and the whole exchange works with a trackpad, including pinch-zoom on the sheet.

Revision clouds, RFIs and status stamps

A cloud tells the reader where to look; it does not tell them what to do. Put the note inside or against the cloud, name the sheet and gridline, and stamp the sheet RFI ISSUED. When the answer comes back, cloud the change itself, stamp the revision and put the RFI number in the text so the paper trail closes.

Status stamps are the cheapest coordination tool in the set: RFI ISSUED, FOR TENDER, AS BUILT, SUPERSEDED. They flatten into the export like any other mark, so a drawing that leaves the office tells the recipient what they are holding without a covering email. On layers you can hide and lock, one reviewer can cloud a whole package without touching the other disciplines' comments.

A dimension needs a scale

A cloud does not need a scale. A dimension does. At 1:100, one millimetre of paper is 100 mm of building, so a run drawn 62 mm long is 6.20 m; at 1:50 a metre of building is 20 mm of paper; on a 1:20 detail it is 50 mm. Set that once per sheet — from the sheet's own preset, or by dragging across a known dimension and typing the real length — and every dimension label the app draws is a real-world figure, not a page measurement.

Edit the calibration and the sheet's measurements are recalculated, which is the point: a set mixes scales (site at 1:500, plans at 1:100, sections at 1:50, details at 1:20), and a markup session that moves between sheets must not carry one sheet's scale onto another. Areas scale with the square of the factor — at 1:100, one square millimetre of paper is 0.01 m² — so an area from an uncalibrated sheet is wrong twice over.

Layers, so a meeting can switch disciplines

Start each markup pass on its own layer and name it for the discipline or the reviewer: structural, mechanical, electrical, or “Sarah — comments”. Hide and lock do the obvious things, and the export flattens only what is visible, so a package can be issued with the architectural comments and without the internal queries that were never meant to leave the office. Undo works across the layer, so a wrong cloud is one keystroke from gone.

macOS specifics that matter

The app is a browser page, so there is nothing to install and no plug-in to keep current: Safari or Chrome on Apple silicon or Intel, from a Mac with the drawing in Downloads, on the Desktop or on a network share. The PDF is rendered by the browser and never uploaded; the project — sheets, calibration, measurements, marks — is stored server-side so it resumes on another Mac. Added to the Dock, it loads from the browser cache and keeps working with no network, saving measurements when the connection returns.

Export in the format the other side expects

Export flattens the marks into the PDF itself, so Preview, Acrobat, Revu or a phone all show the clouds, dimensions and stamps as part of the page — no app, no layer panel, no missing fonts. The quantity schedule leaves as CSV for the estimate, and a printable takeoff sheet gives the same list on paper. Both exports carry the sheet names, so a reviewer can trace any number back to the drawing it came from.

What it is not

There is no Windows build, no Studio Sessions-style live collaboration, no comparison overlay, no scripting API, no OCR and no automatic symbol counting. Revu .bpx tool sets do not import. On a Mac the field narrowed in June 2023 when Revu for Mac reached end of life; this tool covers markup and takeoff for that Mac seat, and says plainly where a job needs something else.