Before a steel package reaches the shop floor, someone in the detailing office has to check it. A connection was detailed wrong, a bolt gauge is off, a piece mark does not match the erection plan, and it has to be caught on paper before steel gets cut. The shop and erection drawings come out of Tekla Structures as PDF, or off the board in AutoCAD, Revit, and ArchiCAD when the job runs that way, and they arrive as heavy multi-sheet sets. A checker pages through the whole set, clouds the errors, writes the correction notes, stamps the sheets and sends the set back for revision. On the shop floor the fabricator does the same read in reverse, tracing piece marks against the erection sequence. This page is about the review and redline side of that work, not the modeling, and where Ncored fits it.

Why heavy shop drawing sets crawl in a general-purpose PDF tool

A shop drawing sheet is dense. One connection detail carries the piece marks, weld symbols, bolt callouts, dimensions and section cuts, and a full package can run a few hundred sheets in one combined 50-200 MB+ project set. General-purpose PDF tools parse the whole document on first open and rebuild the page on every zoom, which is fine for a short letter and falls behind on a shop drawing set where you are constantly zooming into a connection, panning across a large-format erection plan, and jumping between sheets to check one piece mark against another. Adobe Acrobat opens the file but tends to slow on these sets, taking 8 to 12 seconds to first paint on a heavy 50-200 MB+ project set, and the lag repeats on every gesture. When the checking cycle is running against a fabrication schedule, every minute the view spends catching up to the mouse is a minute the package is not moving.

How Ncored fits shop and erection drawing review

Ncored opens a heavy 50-200 MB+ shop or erection drawing set fast, then stays smooth while you check it. Scroll down the package, zoom into a connection detail, pan across a large erection plan, pinch on a Mac trackpad: all stay smooth after the file is open. Tekla Structures PDF exports open the same way, alongside PDF from AutoCAD, Revit, and ArchiCAD. The markup is built for a checking pass. Circle an error with a revision cloud and set its bump size, redline with the freehand pen, rectangle, ellipse and polygon, with eight line styles from solid to dash-dot-dot, and highlight a callout that needs attention. Where a correction needs a written note, drop a comment, type the fix, and it collapses back to a small marker so the sheet stays readable. Add your own approval stamp from an uploaded image, an APPROVED, APPROVED AS NOTED or REVISE AND RESUBMIT graphic you make once, with two stamp slots, scale, rotate and an optional one-click white-background removal so it sits clean over the drawing, saved and reusable across the rest of the package. Every markup is a standard PDF annotation, so the corrected set round-trips to whatever the detailing office or the engineer of record runs, Bluebeam Revu, Adobe Acrobat, Foxit or Apple Preview. Page the set sheet by sheet from the thumbnail sidebar or the keyboard, and open the shop drawings and the erection plan each in its own window across two monitors. Flatten and Compress the set before you send it, and print the marked-up sheets at paper sizes up to A0. The set stays on the local drive, no cloud upload, which matters for a package under NDA. Native on Windows 10 and 11, where most shops and detailing offices work, and native on Apple Silicon Mac for the detailer who is not. Buy it once at €159 lifetime, or €12.99 a month or €79.99 a year, one license covering two devices.

Opens heavy shop drawing sets fast
A combined 50-200 MB+ shop or erection package, including Tekla Structures PDF exports, opens fast and stays smooth on scroll, zoom and pan.
Redline checking built for shop drawings
Revision cloud with adjustable bump size, freehand pen, rectangle, ellipse, polygon, eight line styles and highlight to mark every correction.
Comments where a correction needs a note
Drop a comment on the spot, type the fix, and it collapses to a small marker so the sheet stays readable.
Your own approval stamp
Upload an APPROVED, APPROVED AS NOTED or REVISE AND RESUBMIT graphic once, scale, rotate, remove its white background, reuse it across the package.
Standard markup, offline, native Windows and Mac
Redlines round-trip to Bluebeam, Acrobat and Foxit, the set stays on your drive, on Windows 10 and 11 and Apple Silicon Mac.

Try the 14-day free trial

Download Ncored

Steel detailing PDF markup tool comparison

Bluebeam Revu is the tool most steel detailers and fabricators already know on Windows, and for good reason: it ships calibrated distance and area measurement, quantity takeoff, custom tool chests for reusable symbols, the Markups List for tracking every markup in a table, and Studio Sessions for live multi-user coordination. Ncored ships none of those, so if your checking depends on measured takeoff, a saved tool chest of weld and connection symbols, an exported markup list, or a live session with the detailing office, Bluebeam is the honest answer today. Bluebeam bills per user per year, roughly $260 to $590 per user per year across editions, and its native Mac product ended in 2023. Ncored is the fast, buy-once review and redline layer underneath all of that: open the heavy set fast, cloud the errors, write the notes, stamp the sheets and send it back, at €159 lifetime or €79.99 per year, native on Windows and Apple Silicon Mac. To be clear about scope, Ncored does not measure, calibrate or snap, does not do takeoff, does not export a markup list or CSV, does not keep a per-sheet review-status field, does not overlay two revisions to find changes, and has no live collaboration session. Measurement and revision compare are on the roadmap, not shipped. Many shops keep Bluebeam for the measured and tracked work and run Ncored for fast daily set review. Individual experiences may vary.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Ncored measure a bolt spacing or check a dimension on a shop drawing?
Not in the current release. Ncored opens and marks up the set, but distance and area measurement with drawing-scale calibration, and the snapping that goes with it, are on the roadmap, not shipped. There is no quantity takeoff either. For measured checking and takeoff on a shop drawing today, Bluebeam Revu covers it. Use Ncored for the fast open, the redline and the stamp, and keep a measurement tool for the measured work.
Does Ncored have weld-symbol or custom tool-chest libraries like Bluebeam?
No. Ncored has no custom tool chests and no saved symbol libraries. A checker circles the error with a revision cloud, marks the correction freehand or with a shape, and writes the weld, bolt or dimension note as text or a comment. If your workflow depends on a saved tool chest of reusable weld and connection symbols, that is a Bluebeam Revu feature, and Ncored does not replace it.
Will my redlines open correctly when the set goes back to the detailing office on Bluebeam, Acrobat or Foxit?
Yes. Every markup is stored as a standard PDF annotation stream that any conforming viewer reads and writes, including Bluebeam Revu, Adobe Acrobat, Foxit and Apple Preview. A revision cloud around a bad connection, a freehand redline, a text note and a comment all come through when the detailing office or the engineer of record opens the marked-up set in their own tool.
Can I stamp APPROVED or REVISE AND RESUBMIT, and track which sheets are approved?
You stamp with your own uploaded image. Make an APPROVED, APPROVED AS NOTED or REVISE AND RESUBMIT graphic once, upload it into one of the two stamp slots, then scale, rotate and drop it on each sheet, with an optional one-click white-background removal so it sits clean over the drawing. It is not a built-in stamp library and not a certified digital signature. Ncored does not keep a separate per-sheet review-status field and does not export a markup list or CSV, so the decision travels inside the PDF as the stamp plus a note. For a tracked markup list across a package, Bluebeam Revu's Markups List or an external log is the bigger picture.
Is there a Mac version, and can Ncored overlay two revisions to spot what changed?
Ncored runs natively on Apple Silicon (M-series) with no Rosetta, and on Windows 10 and 11, which is where most shops and detailing offices work. There is no Intel Mac build. Side-by-side overlay to compare two revisions and spot what changed is on the roadmap, not shipped, so for revision compare today Bluebeam Revu covers it. You can try Ncored free for 14 days first: download, install and start. No signup, no email, nothing to enter.