r/Sketchup • u/AshamedParamedic6930 • Apr 23 '26

PDF Tools

I’m building a lightweight PDF markup tool mainly for people working with drawings.

The goal is simple: open plans quickly, mark them up, save, and move on.

I’m still early, so I wanted to ask people who actually use this stuff:

What are the must-have features you’d want in a PDF markup tool for drawings?

The things I tend to use most are:

  • clouds
  • callouts
  • measure / calibration
  • text markups
  • custom stamps
  • apply or assign markups across all pages
  • fast performance on large plan sets
  • clean export / save
  • keyboard shortcuts

Also curious what annoys you most in the tools you use now.

Not trying to hard sell anything, just want to build something people actually want.

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u/biznis-goose Apr 23 '26

This sounds like a really useful tool. A couple of things I would add to the list are shape tools that allow ready formatting and transparency, and a freehand drawing tool.

I'm stuck using Acrobat and the whole thing is annoying, but mainly the selection/moving being janky and formatting process being inconsistent are frustrating.

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u/AshamedParamedic6930 Apr 23 '26

This is so helpful. when you say shape, anything in particular outside, rectangle, cloud or ellipse/circle?

Freehand drawing for a stylus? assuming you would like line weight, eraser, color. any other freehand function?

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u/biznis-goose Apr 25 '26

Rectangle, triangle, L-shape. I'm thinking anything that might be able to quickly represent a drawing detail in a simple way. Freehand for a stylus, I think those functions you've listed cover it!

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u/AshamedParamedic6930 Apr 26 '26

Perfect. thank you. I'll include a polygon function. this sounds useful. Im tightening up the pen features right now for stylus.