Limitations and roadmap
An honest tool deserves honest docs. Here is where Plan Markup’s edges are, split three ways: hard limits today, things on the roadmap, and things that are out of scope on purpose and staying that way.
Current limitations
Section titled “Current limitations”- Early access. No public download yet, for the Mac app or the web app. Builds go to early-access users directly.
- Text search needs real text. ⌘F reads the PDF’s text layer, so it works on CAD-produced drawings and finds nothing on scanned images. There is no OCR.
- Single-page view. You flip sheets rather than scroll continuously. This is a deliberate design decision, not a missing feature; estimators work sheet by sheet.
- One-way Bluebeam interop. Exports can carry editable annotations that Bluebeam and Acrobat work with, but Plan Markup does not import annotations from PDFs. The sidecar file is the only source of truth for markups.
- Folder mode in the browser needs Chrome or Edge. Other browsers get single-file mode.
Roadmap
Section titled “Roadmap”These are planned, not shipped. The app is in daily development against real bid plan sets, so some of these may already be in current early-access builds; nothing on this list is promised for a date.
- Editing feel. Multi-select with marquee, right-click context menus, a full macOS menu bar, callouts (leader plus text box), plain polyline and polygon drawing tools, line end styles like arrowheads and slashes.
- Takeoff depth. A full markups list with custom data columns (division, bid item, status), segment length labels on runs, volume via a depth field on areas, measurement precision and unit settings, per-region scales for detail bubbles on a sheet, a smarter count tool with symbols and running totals.
- Documents and revisions. Page extract, combine, and rotate (always written as new files), a bookmarks panel, search across the whole plan folder, sheet overlay to compare revisions, markup transfer to reissued sheets with a review queue, a quick document switcher.
- Mac polish. File associations and drag-drop open, printing, stamps, takeoff legends on exported sheets, signed and notarized builds.
Out of scope, on purpose
Section titled “Out of scope, on purpose”- Windows and Linux. Mac and browser only. See Install on Mac.
- Cloud accounts and hosted collaboration. No Studio-style sessions. Sidecar files plus your own folder sync do the job. Bid-level teamwork lives in Contractor Takeoff, where Plan Markup embeds as the viewer.
- Pricing. No cost columns, no formula engine, no in-app bid math. The app measures; the CSV carries quantities to your workbook. This is a decision, not a gap.
- Auto-takeoff. No symbol recognition, no automatic tracing. You draw every measurement, so every quantity is one you can defend.
- Importing Bluebeam annotations, PDF text editing, form filling, 3D and BIM, scripting, and digital signatures.
If a limit here is the thing blocking you, say so. Early access exists to find out which of these actually hurt.