Comparing Drawing PDFs for differences

[mzerle]

I'd like to be able to take a PDF of a drawing and compare it with another iterration of a PDF of the drawing. It does already work with drawing files, such as TIFF. According to the PTC-support the effort to implement this comparison should be little effort.

This would better support review situations where a markup doesn't show enough information.  There're also times when someone might want to sneak something into a drawing upon change that isn't readily caught during that review. This would flag that delta.

I know that it would be difficult to compare PDFs originating from different content such as Office document formats.  However, providing this capability for PDFs created from Creo View MCAD would provide a lot of value to the review process.

Even it is mentioned in the Creo View 3.1 it only supports PDF created from PVZ and PVS. There is no regular PDF drawing support.

[MartinHanak]

Did you try to use Google to find such tool ?

Do you use some tool currently ?

see How to compare the differences between two PDF files on Windows? - Super User

[BjoernRueegg]

That's something I would love to see since ever. We have some customers which have implemented some tools from other resellers but it would be really nice to have it out of the box!

Markus Zerle  Don't forget to vote for your own idea

[Chris3]

This is not an easy thing to do. If you have used the 3rd party tools you will find they are not great. The reason being that if the line weights change slightly, or if a view gets shifted slightly then everything gets flagged as having changed. PDFs are not always raster lines sometimes they are scanned (raster). You will end up with differences in scaling, offsets and possibly just dust / dirt artifacts.

IMHO a better allocation of resources would be to put this tool Creo Parametric because things like slightly changing the view could be flagged as such rather than a configuration change. It might be able to be programmed to allow the user to filter out such changes if the user deems them not important. You loose that info and other things like entity IDs when you publish to PDF

Track Changes for Creo Drawings and Models

[fklink]

[We can do that with Creo View and the PDF representation of a drawing stored in Windchill (Windchill 10.2 M030 and Creo View 3.1 F000)]

Edit

I didn't try to store a PDF drawing in Windchill and then try the comparison. Would it be a viable solution for you ?

[mstickma]

Another way of comparing two pdf's:

1. Open both pdf drawings in independent windows.
2. Scale both drawings to be identical in size
3. Use a utility like Vitrite to make one of the windows semi-transparent.
4. Move the semi-transparent window over the other window, and align borders (or some other feature)
5. Observe the items that do not line up over each other. The differences will be easily visible.

[rbecher]

Here at UTC Carrier we use a 3rd party tool called Bluebeam Revu, Compare PDF Documents & Drawings Side by Side | Bluebeam Revu.  It will work for any PDF (PDF does not need to be in Windchill for example), but mainly we use it to compare Creo Drawing PDF's.

[jbraga]

Markus,

Have you reviewed the workaround offered in article CS57252? It might be helpful to you in this situation.

[llie]

We are trying to stick  with PTC products and use Creo View, but is says that it must be linked to Adobe. I know it is available in Creo View 4.1, but does anyone know about 3.0, 3.1, or 4.0?

Here is an article from PTC CS57252, but it doesn't say how to set it up.

https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS57252&art_lang=en&posno=1&q=compare%20pdf&source=search

[llie]

mzerle,

We are using Creo View 4.1 in Production so we can compare drawings to drawings and PDF's to PDF's. No scaling or resizing needed. There is an option setting that is needed in Creo View to open your PDF as a drawing, but it is only one click. You can also align each view with the one you comparing in drawings and PDF's. Our users love it.

Let me know if you need assistance.

[romorrison]

I'm setting this to current functionality.  Creo View MCAD does have the ability to compare two PDFs as noted by others, which appears to meet the request here.  If there is some nuance of the workflow here please let me know but I believe this should be considered as closed.