We recently received a request to add measurement tools and review symbols to Xenmark. Over the weekend we rolled out a feature update covering both.
The new tools give drawing reviewers more ways to work directly on a PDF — checking a dimension, measuring an area, highlighting a route, or quickly marking something with a check, cross, arrow, or attention symbol. The update covers two common needs: measuring directly on drawings, and adding fast visual markup without turning every observation into a full comment.
Measure directly on the drawing
Xenmark now includes four measurement tools:
- Length — the distance between two points.
- Polylength — a route made up of several segments.
- Perimeter — the boundary of a closed shape.
- Area — the size of a closed area.
That covers a good range of everyday review tasks. You can check the distance between two items, follow a pipe or cable route, measure the boundary of an area, or estimate the size of a room or compartment.
The tools stay active after each measurement, so you can work through several rooms, routes, or drawing details without selecting the tool again each time.
Measurements can be edited afterwards. Individual points can be moved, new corners can be added, and captions can be dragged away from the geometry if they’re covering something important on the drawing. Optional text labels can be added to give a measurement more context.
Set the scale and units to match the drawing
Before Xenmark shows a calculated measurement, the page needs a scale. You can choose a standard drawing scale, enter a custom ratio, tell Xenmark which sheet format the drawing was originally produced for, or calibrate the page using a known dimension.
Calibration is useful when you’re working with scanned drawings, cropped PDFs, or files where you’d rather not rely on the scale printed in the title block.
For drawings that have been resized during export, the sheet-format option accounts for the difference between the original sheet size and the PDF you’re reviewing. A drawing originally produced as A1 but exported as A3 shouldn’t be measured as though the physical page size had stayed the same.
You can also choose whether a drawing works in metres, centimetres, or millimetres, so displayed measurements match the units that make sense for the drawing in front of you.
Override a calculated value when you already know it
Sometimes the line you draw is mainly there to show where a dimension applies, while the value itself is already known from another source.
So any calculated measurement can be overridden with a manual value. You might trace the approximate location of a dimension on an older drawing, then enter the confirmed figure from a site measurement, specification, survey, or updated drawing. The geometry still shows where the measurement applies, while the manual value shows the dimension you actually want the reviewer to use.
Overrides apply to individual displayed values, so an area can still show a calculated area while another displayed value is entered manually. Remove the override and Xenmark returns to the calculated value.
This is useful when a drawing is being used as a communication surface rather than as the final source of dimensional truth.
Add quick visual review symbols
Not every comment needs a full note.
Xenmark now includes Check, Cross, and Attention symbols for quick visual marking, together with Arrow and Cloud tools for pointing out specific areas of a drawing.
Check, Cross, and Attention use both shape and colour, so their meaning doesn’t depend on colour alone. They can be resized after being placed, and they work on any PDF without setting a page scale.
That makes them useful for quick reviews where you want to mark something as checked, highlight an issue, draw attention to a detail, or point towards the exact part of the drawing being discussed. A cloud can surround a larger area that needs attention, while an arrow can point directly at a smaller detail. A check or cross gives an immediate visual indication without adding unnecessary text to the drawing.
Keep markups readable
Measurements and symbols can use one of ten predefined colours. The palette is intentionally limited rather than a completely free colour picker — the aim is to keep markups readable against white drawing backgrounds, and still useful when drawings are printed or viewed in greyscale.
Measurement captions can also be moved away from busy drawing areas, with a leader line keeping the connection between the value and the geometry clear. That’s especially useful on dense engineering drawings, where placing a measurement directly over the geometry hides the detail you’re trying to review.
Included in drawing exports
Measurements and symbols are included when you export a Comment Plan PDF or a project archive. The markup created during the review stays visible on the exported drawing alongside the rest of the review information.
They also come through in the Excel export, as a measurement and symbol register on its own sheet. The comment list sheet is unchanged, so the values are there to read or work with without being mixed into the comments.
Project Managers and Editors can create measurements and symbols; Participants can view them.
Together, the new tools make Xenmark more useful for drawing reviews where the reviewer needs to do more than leave text comments — checking dimensions, measuring spaces, following a route, highlighting a problem, or simply placing a clear check or cross directly on the drawing.
As always, if you have a feature request, or you find a bug or something that doesn’t work as expected, we’d like to hear about it.
Questions or feedback: support@xenmark.app