How do I format Plan Files for Fieldwire?

Overview and Background

When you upload your plans to Fieldwire, our platform uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to scan for sheet numbers and callouts/elevations. Your plan files are then automatically organized by sheet number in your Fieldwire Plans tab. When you upload a new revision of the same drawing in the future, our scanner will recognize it by sheet number and overlay the sheet as the latest version of the same plan, instead of adding it as its own independent file. The same scanner recognizes sheet numbers encased in standard callout formatting on your drawings and automatically hyperlinks them to the corresponding plans whenever they're uploaded to Fieldwire. 

Every once in a while, you may encounter a formatting error uploading a plan to Fieldwire or find that some callouts are failing to automatically hyperlink. Checking and updating, if necessary, just a few simple settings in your PDF file(s) almost always solves the issue. This article outlines how to format your plan files before uploading them to Fieldwire to ensure you get the most out of our platform. The tips in this article will help ensure that:

• Your Plan sheet numbers are accurately scanned so your plans are automatically named by the Fieldwire OCR.
• Any Plan names referenced in callouts are read so automatic hyperlinks will activate. 

Table of Contents

PDF File Formatting

Text Formatting

Sheet Name and Description Format Recommendations

How to scan for sheet numbers and descriptions on multiple plans at once

Callout Format Requirements

What else should I check for?

Check how your PDF plan is formatted

There are a few distinct bases to cover when formatting your plan PDFs and the text in those files. To ensure maximum efficiency and accuracy of our OCR when your plans are uploaded to Fieldwire, take the guidelines into consideration prior to exporting them for upload.

PDF Formatting

• Plans should be saved/exported in .PDF format. (We do support PNG, and JPEG file types, however, we recommend saving/exporting your plan files as .PDFs)

Note: password-protected PDFs will not be able to be uploaded to the Plans tab. Password-protected PDFs can be uploaded to the Files tab and accessed by entering the password.

• DWG files are not currently supported (we are always updating our software and adding new features, so this may change one day). In the meantime, you can export the DWG from the program you’re viewing it in and create a PDF, which you will then be able to upload into Fieldwire.
• Upon upload, plan sheets are rasterized at a minimum of 150 DPI. 
• Plans should be 'Vector' files. 
  
  • Instead of raster PDFs or PDFs with a mix of vector and raster content.
•  Any images (ex: stamps) on your plans should be 'flattened.' 
• Plans should generally be in landscape orientation. It's okay to upload portrait-oriented plans, but in either case, ensure your text can be read left-to-right (horizontally-oriented on the page) rather than top-to-bottom or bottom to top (vertically-oriented on the page).
  
  • You can change the scan location of your plan to scan by multiple orientations.
  • You can rotate your plans once they are uploaded to Fieldwire. When you do, our OCR will re-scan the rotated plan and again look for text that can be read from left-to-right by default. If you have text that needs to be read right-to-left, you can use the batch edit plan names and descriptions tool. 

Note: The plans tab has an upload limit of 1GB at a time. If you are issued a set of plans that exceed 1GB, consider splitting the file by set. 

Note: Plans over 50 MB cannot be exported when viewed individually. You can export these plans from the all plans view. To learn more, please click here. 

Text Formatting

The OCR  scans for discrete words separated by spaces to automatically name your plans and link callouts to corresponding sheets. Clear and unobstructed text is detected more accurately than text boxes that overlap with each other or other objects on your drawings. Be sure to format the text on your plans according to these guidelines: 

• Use a Truetype font for your sheet number (plan name), description, and wherever you add callouts.
  • Fieldwire will scan for alphanumeric plan names that have 2-4 characters.
  • Ensure that plans with 2-character names, are in letter (A-Z) + digit (0-9) format.
    • Ex: A1 will activate, where AA and 11 will not activate. 
      
      
• Monospaced, sans-serif fonts are ideal.
  • Ex: Courier, Courier New, Lucida  Console, Monaco, Consolas, and Inconsolata.
  • You can also use a simple Sans-Serif font, such as Arial or Helvetica (or any UTF-8 font).
    
    
• Do not alter the width or orientation (ex: bold/italic) of the characters.
  
  
• The OCR will scan for discrete text boxes to hyperlink - it will not pick up comma-separated text in a single text box:  

Discrete text boxes will scan	Comma-separated text won't scan

Tip: A quick way to confirm that the text on your plans is formatted in a way that will be successfully scanned by our OCR is to see if it's is selectable (in individual text boxes) in a PDF Viewer. We recommend Adobe Acrobat Reader if you don't already have another PDF viewer to use. 

Sheet Name and Description Format Recommendations

The OCR looks for discrete words separated by spaces. Each sheet number (or title or plan name) should be in its own respective text box. Clear and unobstructed text is detected more accurately:

Sheet Numbers and Descriptions (Sheet Titles) should be in the bottom-right corner of the plan.

Sheet Numbers and Descriptions NOT in the bottom-right corner, written in especially small font, or vertically-oriented text may be difficult for the OCR to scan.

How to scan for sheet numbers and descriptions on multiple plans at once

4. Resize the red boxes in the pop-up window to dictate where the sheet number and description are located in the title blocks of your plans. Zoom in and drag the corners to resize the box to cover the relevant text. Select 'Process' to begin the scan:

Tips: Ensure that the arrow runs in the direction your text should be read. Size the boxes so they only contain the sheet number and description. Try to make sure that no unintentional text is included in the red zone. You can also uncheck the 'Sheet #' or 'Description' options to the left of the 'Process' button if you only need to scan for one of these attributes. 

When the scan is completed, your sheets should now have the correct names and descriptions. You can repeat this process as much as you like if need be.

Callout Format Requirements

Our scanner will recognize properly-formatted references to other plans in your drawings; we then automatically hyperlink those callouts to the referenced plans whenever they're uploaded to your Fieldwire project. The OCR will scan for two things to create a callout Hyperlink: 

Vector Text inside Circles: If there is a circle with vector text, Fieldwire will create a circle hyperlink.		In a PDF Viewer, try to highlight your text. If it highlights, it's vector text.
Parse Vector Text: Fieldwire will create a text box hyperlink around disparate vector text, each in their own text box.		In a PDF Viewer, try to highlight your text. If it highlights, it's vector text.

Examples of callouts that won't activate automatic hyperlinks: 

Scanned PDF, so the text is not vector-based.	The OCR does not search for diagonal text.	Hard to read font.

Important: Even if your callouts and the sheet numbers (plan names) within them have the appropriate formatting, automatic Hyperlinks will not activate if the sheet name of the referenced plan in Fieldwire does not exactly match with the sheet name on the callouts: 

On the 'Plans' tab:	On a Callout Hyperlink:

Take a look at the article below for more information about why your callout hyperlinks may not activate. It also contains instructions on how to troubleshoot missing callout hyperlinks in Fieldwire. 

• Why aren't my plan hyperlinks activating?

What else should I check for?

Fieldwire's plan processing will upload your plans without issues nearly every time if you make sure to follow the guidelines described in this article. The section below is to mainly capture any, fairly uncommon, edge cases that might occur and how to address these. 

Does the PDF File have any locked comments? 

If the PDF File has locked comments, made in a PDF creator/editor (like Adobe Acrobat Pro or Autocad), the comments can obscure content on the plan after it has been uploaded to Fieldwire. 

If you upload a plan, and it looks like the plan has missing information-- it likely has locked comments that obscure the plan: 

The Plan in Fieldwire:	Open the PDF in Acrobat Pro (Or another PDF viewer):
Some text on the plan is cut-off or missing.	Are there comments in the areas with missing content?

To check this, open the Plan in a .PDF viewer, and see if it has any comments in the areas with the missing content. If it does, you can either remove the comments yourself or if they are locked, or remove them all through the PDF Optimizer in Acrobat Pro.

To remove the comments in Acrobat Pro: 

1.  When the PDF is open, select the 'Optimize PDF' tool, then choose 'Advanced Optimization'. 

2.  Select 'Discard User Data' and 'Discard all comments, forms and multimedia': 

3. Choose 'Ok' and save this as a unique PDF. 

After the comments have been removed, sections of plans will no longer be obscured:

Note: This is only one solution to remove user comments en masse. If you do not have access to Acrobat Pro, or cannot delete the comments in another way, contact the Designer, Architect, or creator of the drawing. 

Does the PDF file have a large MediaBox? 

If you upload a Plan to the 'Plans' tab, and you notice a lot of empty white space around the plan, the MediaBox around the plan will need to be adjusted:

When processing the PDF, we take the MediaBox of the PDF into consideration (as opposed to the CropBox, which Acrobat and other PDF viewers do). The MediaBox is used to specify the width and height of the page. For the average user, this probably equals the actual page size

If you notice a large discrepancy between the 'empty space' in Fieldwire and the lack thereof in a PDF viewer, adjust the MediaBox of the plan. 

There are several tools one can use to adjust the MediaBox of a PDF file-- in these situations, it is often the best to have the designer of the plans adjust this. 

• Crop the size of the PDF in Acrobat Pro
• Adjust the size of the MediaBox in PitStop Pro (A plug-in for Adobe Acrobat)

Does the PDF file contain any Errors? 

On the rare occasion when you upload a PDF plan to Fieldwire, but it does not fully process, or if there is a 'blank' plan tile, the PDF plan has an error and did not process fully: 

If you encounter this error after uploading a plan, you have a few options you can leverage to resolve this. 

1. Open the file in Adobe Acrobat Reader, then, save this File as a new PDF file, and then try to upload to Fieldwire once more. Opening and saving a file as a new PDF can sometimes resolve PDF errors.
   
   
2. If you open the file in Adobe Acrobat Reader and you receive a pop-up that indicates the PDF Plan has errors, then the File is likely corrupted. You may either need the design team or architect to fix the errors, or they will need to issue you a new drawing: 

The creator of the PDF may have more information as to why the PDF document has errors on it. But if you use Adobe Acrobat Pro, leverage the 'Preflight' tool to diagnose and apply 'fixups': 

• Correcting problem areas with the Preflight tool.

If you still receive an error message in Acrobat, or if the PDF file does not process fully, request a new file from the creator of the file, or from the design team or architects. 

More Information 

These articles touch on effective ways to utilize the Plans tab: 

• How are Plans named in Fieldwire?
• How can I edit plan names to resolve plan naming conflicts?
• What plan file types are supported on Fieldwire?