Putting one revision of a sheet over another and seeing exactly what changed.
Page Compare puts the revisions of one sheet on top of each other and marks what changed between
them. It answers the question a revised set always raises: what is actually different, and does it
touch my takeoff.
Getting started
Right-click the sheet on the canvas and choose Compare.
Add Version - bring in the revision PDF of this sheet. Compare needs at least two versions of the same sheet; with one there is nothing to compare.
Scrub the Version Blend slider to move between them.
The original is labelled M, for master.
Page Compare is part of the Advanced feature set. It is available throughout the trial, which
hands out the full product for its whole length.
The blend
The slider runs across every version of the sheet. How it moves between them is the blend model:
Crossfade - fades between the two versions either side of the thumb. The default, and the one that reads like turning a page.
Onion - every version contributes at once, weighted by how far it is from the thumb. An onion-skin view of the whole history rather than a pair.
Snap - holds each version steady, then snaps to the next.
Marking what changed
Changes are drawn as coloured marks over the crisp base sheet:
Show Added marks content added in the newer version, in the Added Color.
Show Removed marks content removed or erased, in the Removed Color.
Both colours are yours to change, and the chip beside each resets it to the default.
Change Basis decides what each version is measured against:
Incremental - changes against the previous version. What this revision did.
Cumulative - all changes against the original. What has happened since the set was issued.
Incremental answers "what did they change this time"; cumulative answers "how far has this sheet
drifted from what I bid".
Including your own work
Include Measurements shows each version's measured takeoff, materials and utilities, in the overlay.
Include Markups shows each version's markup annotations.
Turn them on to see whether a change landed on something you had already taken off.
Aligning versions
Two versions of a sheet rarely land in exactly the same place - a reprint or a rescan shifts by a
few pixels, and every one of those shows up as a change. Alignment fixes that.
Auto Align registers the active version onto the original for a clean overlay. Try this first.
Nudge moves the version one pixel at a time, in any direction, when auto alignment is close but not exact.
Reset Alignment puts this version back to default.
Select a version other than the original to align it; the original is what everything else is
registered onto.
A compare that looks like everything changed is almost always a registration problem, not a
revision. Align before you start reading the marks.
Notes
Nothing is baked into the sheet. Closing compare needs no undo, and your pages are untouched.