Swapped out my paper blueprints for a tablet on site, no more soggy drawings

For years I was the guy lugging around rolled up blueprints that got soaked in the rain or torn on rebar. Last month I finally bought a cheap rugged tablet and loaded up our plans through a basic PDF viewer. It cost me about $150 after a case and screen protector, which is less than I spent on printing fees in two months. The best part is zooming in on details without squinting at faded lines or chasing pages blown by the wind. Now I mark up changes right on the screen and email them to the office from the trailer. Has anyone else made this switch and found a good app for markup that works offline? My current one crashes sometimes when I try to save.

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scott.grace8d ago

Jump into the whole digital switch thing - it's wild how we're all slowly replacing stuff that used to just be accepted as annoying. I noticed it at my buddy's restaurant last week, their server was using a tablet to take orders instead of those little paper pads that always had ketchup smears on them. Same deal with my neighbor's kid doing homework on a tablet instead of a backpack full of crumpled worksheets. For the offline markup app, try Xodo PDF reader, it's free and saves locally, never crashed on me during a big job site review. You'll probably end up wondering why you put up with soggy paper for so long once you get used to marking things up and sending them off without hunting for a printer.