ProjectWise PDF on-demand. mobile connectivity, and QR codes

Re: ProjectWise PDF on-demand. mobile connectivity, and QR codes

Kevin van Haaren — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 22:39:37 GMT

we've found the ones that don't want to be distracted by technology (and we have lots of them as well) prefer the pen. They use the pen, mark stuff up, hand the pen to the technician and keep the paper for their own reference. They don't even have to touch a computer.

The pen seems cheaper than giving them a mobile device would be (unless you already give them mobile devices, some of our engineers get them, some don't). And we share the pen among several users.

Re: ProjectWise PDF on-demand. mobile connectivity, and QR codes

Stuart Nicholson — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:39:05 GMT

Kevin.

Thanks for your comments.

Storing the actual mark-up would be nice, and thus the digital pen technology is probably the way forward. We might offer this solution on some projects. However, the cost of the digital pen technology is generally perceived as prohibitive in an organisation of our size.

Normally, our engineers would simply convey the mark-up in paper form to a local CAD Technician. If it needs to be conveyed further afield then the mark-up might be scanned to PDF and uploaded to ProjectWise manually. I still see a lot of mileage in a simple QR code approve/reject capability in these instances.

We appreciate there are lots of digital review solutions out there (digital pens, Navigator and i-models, adobe mark-up tools etc. etc.), but we have a continual problem where many engineers do not want to be distracted by technology and so they resist the use of digital review processes. Hence the search for relatively low-tech solutions that still enable us to record and track document progress in the DMS.

Stuart.

Re: ProjectWise PDF on-demand. mobile connectivity, and QR codes

Kevin van Haaren — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 03:55:08 GMT

I like the ability to embed a QR code into generated PDFs with the URN of the file that generated the PDF but I'm not sure it would work for this particular workflow.

A workflow of:

Review sheet, use phone to scan QR code, accept/reject document, <get info back to projectwise>

seems more cumbersome, and for a rejected document there wouldn't be any markups to correct the drawing, those would have to be communicated seperately. The workflow with the pen is:

Review sheet, mark up with pen, dock pen (can be done by someone else), markups automatically propgated to the original drawing for review. If a drawing is approved, a checkmark can be placed on the document (or a signature) to give a positive indicator it was reviewed and accepted.

I can see the ability to pair a pen with a mobile device so markups could be automatically sent back via e-mail (the pen software currently supports sending markups via e-mail but requires a PC doesn't work with mobile) as being a great work around for this too.

The QR route requires some programming from Bentley, including adding the QR code, and the mobile application for populating data back to ProjectWise, but the dynamic pen can be implemented today already (except for the pairing with a mobile device which would require work if you wanted to use that.)