BIMIO Pinup

Goal. Export the selected sheets (or views) as deterministic PNGs, with an optional vector PDF, and open the review gallery.

1. Press Pinup in the View panel of the BIMIO tab.The selection screen opens with all the project's printable sheets listed and ticked.

   

   assets/shots/pinup/fig-03.pngSelection screen with the list of sheets, boxes ticked and the Capture button at the bottom right.

2. Choose the scope with the Sheets or Views toggles.Sheets lists the sheets by number; Views lists the printable views (excluding sheets and schedules) grouped by view type.
3. If you want to limit the set, open Set: All ▾ and choose a saved sheet set.These are the project's print/publish sets (ViewSheetSet). All shows everything again.
4. Filter by number or name with the text box and adjust the selection with the tick boxes or the All / None buttons.All and None act only on what is visible after the filter. The Capture button shows how many items you are about to capture.
5. Review the options on the right: Vector PDF, Skip already captured and the 2000px / 4000px quality.Vector PDF also exports a PDF per sheet (recommended for a crisp HTML). Skip already captured reuses the existing PNGs on disk and makes the pass almost instant; untick it to recapture and archive versions. 4000px is sharper; 2000px is lighter and faster.
6. Press Capture.The progress overlay appears with the sheet in progress. You can press Cancel: whatever has already been captured is kept and moves to the gallery. Revit stays busy for the duration of the capture.

   

   assets/shots/pinup/fig-04.pngProgress overlay during capture, with the name of the sheet in progress, the blue bar and the Cancel button.

7. Wait for the gallery to open.If any vector PDF fails, the status bar says so (the affected sheets keep only their PNG). If you renumbered or renamed sheets since the last capture, Pinup automatically migrates their files, versions, pins, markups and flags to the new key.

• With Skip already captured enabled, the vector PDF is also filled in only where it is missing: you can add vectors to an already captured set without recapturing the PNGs.
• Every recapture of an existing sheet archives the previous image as a version: that is what feeds the Visual Diff comparator.

Goal. Return to the review gallery instantly, loading the captures already saved on disk.

1. Open Pinup and find the View last capture (N · date) button next to Close.It only appears if there are captured PNGs for this project; it shows how many there are and the date of the most recent one.
2. Press it.The gallery is built directly from disk, without calling Revit: it is immediate. It restores flags, notes, pins, markups and each sheet's version count.

• This is the fast route for importing a received review or exporting reports without touching the capture.

Goal. Work through the set, inspect each sheet with real zoom and record which ones are fine and which need work.

1. In the gallery, use the All / ⚑ Flagged / ✓ Approved / Annotated / Untouched filters to narrow which cards you see.Annotated shows the sheets with pins, markup or a note; Untouched, the ones nobody has touched yet.
2. Click a thumbnail to open the lightbox.The sheet loads at full resolution.

   

   assets/shots/pinup/fig-05.pngLightbox with an enlarged sheet, numbered pins, the side pin panel and the bottom button bar with Pin mode, Approve and Flag.

3. Navigate and inspect: wheel to zoom towards the cursor, drag to pan, double-click to refit, ‹ › arrows or the ← → keys to change sheet.The zoom percentage appears in the bottom bar.
4. Press ✓ Approve (key a or space) or ⚑ Flag (key f) according to your verdict.They are mutually exclusive and toggleable: repeating the same one removes it, pressing the other replaces it. The status is saved immediately and paints the badge on the gallery card.
5. Write a general note in the Sheet note box in the right panel if appropriate.It is saved when you leave the box or change sheet, and appears as a 💬 bubble on the card.
6. Press Back to gallery (esc) to return.From the gallery, Esc returns to the selection screen; only the selection screen closes the window with Esc.

• Statuses and notes are saved per project in local files (flags.dat): you can close Revit and pick up the review where it was.

Goal. Anchor observations to exact points on the sheet and follow them as conversations with a status.

1. In the lightbox, enable 📍 Pin mode (key p).The cursor becomes a crosshair and the button is highlighted.
2. Click the exact point on the sheet where the problem is.A numbered pin is created and the cursor jumps to the text box of the new entry in the right panel.

   

   assets/shots/pinup/fig-06.pngPin panel with a newly created entry being edited and its numbered pin on the sheet.

3. Type the pin text.It is saved when you leave the box. If you leave it empty, the pin removes itself. Your pins show a blue dot; other authors' pins, orange.
4. To reply to a thread, type in its Reply box and press Enter (or the ↩ button).A reply is a pin at the same point: the thread groups messages by coordinate.
5. Click the thread's status chip to cycle it: Open → In progress → Resolved → Verified.Anyone can change the status; it is recorded as a system line with author and date, and the pin colour changes.
6. Use Remove on your own messages to delete them; click a pin on the sheet to scroll the panel to its thread.Other authors' messages are read-only.

• The panel title summarises the situation: Pins (3 · 7 msg · 2 open).
• Pins keep their on-screen size even when you zoom: they do not get in the way when inspecting detail.

Goal. See what has changed on a sheet between captures: before on the left, now on the right.

1. Recapture the set with Skip already captured unticked once the model has moved on.Each sheet that already had a capture archives the previous one as V1, V2… The card badge turns from grey to blue when there is history.
2. Open the sheet in the lightbox and find the version chips next to the name: V1, V2…, Current and ◧ Compare.Each chip shows its date on hover. They only appear if the sheet has archived versions.
3. Click a V chip to view that old version in full; Current returns to the live capture.While you are viewing an archived version, pins are hidden (they belong to the current capture).
4. Press ◧ Compare and drag the horizontal blue handle.The old version is shown to the left of the divider and the current one to the right. With Compare active, the V chips choose which version sits on the left.

   

   assets/shots/pinup/fig-07.pngLightbox in Compare mode with the blue divider in the middle of the sheet: old version on the left, current capture on the right.

• The shareable HTML includes the same comparator with the last three versions of each sheet, so the external reviewer can also see what changed.

Goal. Generate a single .html file with the whole set, the existing annotations and the review viewer, ready to send to anyone without Revit.

1. In the gallery, press Export shareable HTML.
2. Name the review set when prompted (for example, Issue Review 03).The name is remembered per project and forms part of the file name: when you re-export you overwrite the same HTML on the server instead of generating a new one per date.
3. Choose the quality in the dialog: High, Medium or Low.High embeds the vector PDF (crisp at any zoom and with real scales, the heaviest). Medium drops the vector and uses high-resolution JPEG. Low generates the smallest file, intended for email.

   

   assets/shots/pinup/fig-08.pngShareable export quality dialog with the three options and High preselected.

4. Choose where to save the Pinup - project - set.html file and confirm.The overlay shows progress sheet by sheet; when it finishes, the status bar shows the final size and the HTML opens in your browser so you can check it.
5. Send that single file by email or leave it on the server.It needs no other files: images, PDFs, viewer and data are all inside.

• If the file turns out too heavy for email, re-export in Medium or Low: the size is dominated by the embedded vector PDF.
• Your own pins without text do not travel: always write something in every pin you want to share.

Goal. Red-line the set from any browser and return the review as a small file.

1. Open the .html file and type your name in the Your name box.It is mandatory: the viewer will not open any sheet until there is an author, because every comment is signed.

   

   assets/shots/pinup/fig-09.pngHeader of the shareable HTML with the Your name box, the Print summary button and the Collaborate group.

2. Click a sheet to open the viewer and use the toolbar on the left.Tools: select/move (v), pin (1), pencil (2), line (3), arrow (4), rectangle (5), ellipse (6), revision cloud (7), highlighter (8), text (t), leader (l), dimension (m), area (a), eraser (e), image (i or Ctrl+V with a screenshot), counter (c), APPROVED/REVISE/REJECTED stamps, four semantic colours (red fix, orange warning, blue question, green OK), three stroke weights and undo/redo (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y). With the selection tool you can move and stretch your own strokes, or delete them with Del.

   

   assets/shots/pinup/fig-10.pngHTML viewer with the vertical toolbar, a red revision cloud drawn and several numbered pins.

3. To measure, first choose the scale in the 📏 drop-down in the bottom bar (1:20 to 1:500, custom 1:N or 2-point calibration).The predefined scales require the sheet to carry a vector PDF (the real paper size comes from there). Without a vector, use the dimension tool on an element of known length: the viewer will ask for the real metres and calibrate the sheet. The dimension labels in metres and the area tool in square metres.
4. Approve or flag each sheet with the ✓ Approve and ⚑ Flag buttons on its card, and write general notes in each sheet's box.The top panel shows progress (approved, flagged, pins, markups, untouched) and the All / Annotated / Flagged / Untouched filters.
5. Converse in the pin threads from the right panel: type in Reply… and press Enter (or the ↩ button), and click the status chip to cycle it (Open → In progress → Resolved → Verified).The sender's pins arrive read-only, but you can reply to them and change the thread status; Shift+Enter inserts a line break in the reply.
6. Move quickly with J/K or ←/→ between sheets, wheel to zoom, space to pan, Esc to cancel or close.Everything auto-saves in the browser's local storage: you can close and pick up later on the same machine.
7. When you finish, press Export review in the Collaborate group.It downloads review - (title) - (your name).txt. Send it to whoever sent you the HTML. With Import reviews you can also load other colleagues' .txt files and see their annotations overlaid.
8. Optional: press Print summary to print (or save as PDF) a report with each annotated sheet, its numbered threads and the totals.

• The sender's annotations arrive pre-placed and read-only: the reviewer can see them but cannot alter them.
• If the browser warns that storage is full, export the review immediately so you do not lose work.
• In Chromium-based browsers you can drag the team folder onto the page to publish and receive reviews directly against that folder.

Goal. Pour a reviewer's .txt onto your sheets: their pins, strokes, notes and flags appear in your gallery.

1. In the gallery, press Import review… and select the received .txt file.
2. Check the status bar message.It shows how many changes and pins were applied and from which reviewer. The import is idempotent: identical records already present are skipped as duplicates, so importing twice duplicates nothing.
3. Open the affected sheets in the lightbox to see the annotations.The reviewer's pins appear in orange with their name and date, their strokes are drawn on the sheet with an author tooltip, and their general notes are appended to the sheet note with the [author] prefix.

   

   assets/shots/pinup/fig-11.pngLightbox showing an external reviewer's orange pins next to your own blue ones, with the side panel listing both authors.

4. If something does not appear, check the import log.Next to the imported .txt a .import-log.txt file is written with the line-by-line verdict (added, duplicate or skipped and why).

• You can import several .txt files from different reviewers: exact-signature deduplication prevents collisions.
• The reviewer's flags (Approved/Flagged) are also imported and replace the sheet's status.

Goal. Let several people in the practice review the same set at once, with common captures and automatic merging of annotations.

1. In the gallery, press Shared folder… and choose the team folder (a network or Desktop Connector path).Pinup creates a subfolder inside it named after the project. The choice is remembered per project.
2. Read the confirmation in the status bar (Team folder ON).The first time, your local captures (PNG and PDF) are copied to the shared folder without overwriting anything, so the team starts with a populated gallery; the gallery reloads itself from that folder.
3. Work as normal: pins, strokes and statuses.Your activity is published on its own (with a small delay) to review - youruser.txt inside the folder. A file watcher detects everyone else's files and merges their updates; the status bar announces Team sync when new activity arrives.
4. To disable it, press Shared folder… again and cancel the dialog: Pinup will offer to disable the folder.Your data is kept; captures return to your local folder.

• The v1 synchronisation shares pins and markup between Pinup users; sheet notes only arrive when they come from an HTML-viewer reviewer's .txt, and the approved/flagged flags remain per user.
• HTML reviewers can also drop their review - name.txt in that same folder: Pinup detects it as another author.
• When you close the window, Pinup publishes one last time so nothing is left pending.

Goal. Produce the drawing-control deliverables: a row-based register for Excel and a visual report on the state of the review.

1. In the gallery, press Sheet register (CSV), choose where to save it and confirm.One row per sheet with: number, name, current revision and its date, issue date, drawn/checked/approved by (from the title block), review status, pins, open and resolved issues, markups and comment. It is saved in UTF-8 with BOM so Excel respects accents, and opens automatically.
2. Press Contact sheet for the visual report.It generates review-report.html in the captures folder and opens it in the browser: a self-contained dashboard with set statistics, thumbnails, per-sheet status, open/resolved issues and the contributor ranking. It works offline.

   

   assets/shots/pinup/fig-12.pngreview-report.html dashboard in the browser with statistics cards, a search box and the sheet register with thumbnails.

• The CSV's open/resolved issues come from the thread statuses: keep the chips up to date so the register reflects reality.
• Title-block metadata is read from the model at export time: there is no need to recapture after issuing a revision.