Look It Up · New to this · 3 min
If you already use a PDF markup tool
The markups list, tool sets, calibrating and exporting, set beside what you know from other PDF readers and markup tools.
If you have highlighted, commented and measured in a PDF tool, you’ll recognise most of this. The differences are about where things are kept.
- The markups or comments list
- The register is the list of what you have measured (Take-off view) and Review is the list of comments and their status. Both can be filtered and exported.
- A tool set or tool chest
- Styles are saved looks, and stamps are saved marks. A group you set up the same way on every job (a stock length, a lap, a waste) can be kept as one of your Ways of measuring, which saves the set-up and never any measurements.
- Calibrate
- The same idea: click both ends of a known dimension. It’s kept per page, and a measurement remembers the scale it was taken at, so correcting a scale later asks before it changes anything already measured.
- Measurement and quantities
- Length, area, perimeter, angle, count and cutouts, grouped into a bill that shows its working and exports to a report, Excel or CSV.
- Layers
- Layers hold your markup and can be shown, hidden and locked, and they list what’s on them. They’re written to the exported PDF as layers, so another reader can switch them.
- Locked markup
- A locked item can’t be picked up here, and is written to the PDF with the standard's lock flags so a reader that follows them keeps it still. A lock is a guard against slips, not a permission: anyone can unlock.
- Sessions and shared review
- A Dato Room is a live session: you share a drawing, a link brings people in, and you all mark it up at once with chat, shared files and a record of who did what. It’s sealed so the relay that carries it can’t read it. Without a room, nothing leaves your computer unless you choose to send it: export a marked-up PDF, send a drawing for review, or save a project file.
What goes where when you save
- Export a marked-up PDF: your markup as ordinary PDF annotations, so anyone's reader can show it. This is the one to send.
- Save a project file: everything, including measurements, groups and layers, for you or a colleague using this program.
- Automatic save: a safety copy on this computer only.