I am David, an architect in Vilnius. I run my own studio and I also build a PDF app, Ncored, because I got tired of waiting for our own sets to open. Some of you here tried it after I posted in July, and a few of you told me what to fix. Thank you for that, it went straight into the work.
I have been stuck on one question since, and this room is the right one to ask.
Bluebeam gives you a very large number of tools, and nearly every markup app built after it copies that, because a long toolbar looks like a complete product. Here is what I keep coming back to: adding tools is the easy half, and anyone can do it. Opening a dense ArchiCAD set and still moving around it without the wait is the half that almost nothing on the market manages, and it is where all of my effort has gone.
So I have not added them all. Not because the app is a lighter option. I add tools one at a time, only the ones I am sure people really need, so each one is tested properly before the next one arrives. The other way is a long toolbar nobody checked: half of it may not be needed, you cannot find the tools you actually use, and it takes up a large part of the screen.
What I cannot decide is where the line sits.
Argument one: most of those tools are never used. Each one you add stands between someone and the five they actually touch, and the app gets slower to learn and slower to open.
Argument two: the day you need the one tool that is missing, nothing else about the app matters. You close it and go back to whatever has it.
So, the actual question: when you mark up a set out of ArchiCAD, which tools does your hand reach for in a normal week? Not the ones you would like to exist. The ones you actually use. And is there one whose absence would send you straight back to Bluebeam, Acrobat, Foxit, PDF-XChange or whatever you work in today?
Straight on scope so nobody wastes time: today it is viewing and markup. No measurement, takeoff, OCR, forms or e-sign yet. It runs on Windows and Apple Silicon Mac, and the interface is in English or German. It is at ncored.com if you want to open one of your own heavy sets in it before answering.
I will answer everyone in this thread. If you tell me a tool is missing and enough of you say the same, that is how it gets decided, same as in July