What Xenmark is

Xenmark is a tool for reviewing PDF drawings as a team. It is built for whoever runs the review. Most often that is the side receiving drawings — owners, owner representatives, building managers, asset operators and technical consultants — but it works pointed the other way too: an engineering firm can run the review itself and collect its client's comments on the issued PDF, without handing over CAD files. Either way the job is the same: turn scattered feedback into a structured review that can be sent back.

Comments are numbered and placed on the drawing where they apply. Replies stay attached to the comment they answer. Each comment carries a status until it is closed out, and revisions keep their own history, so a comment raised on Rev A still reads against Rev A when Rev B arrives.

Two documents come out at the end: a comment plan PDF showing where every numbered comment sits on the drawing, and an Excel comment list saying what each one means. Same numbering on both. When the project closes, the whole review — every revision's exports, the attachments and the activity log — downloads as a single archive you keep.

It runs in a browser with nothing to install. Only the person running the review needs a Xenmark plan; the people they invite take part without paying.

The workflow it is designed around

Receive A revision arrives from the engineering firm as a PDF.
Mark up Comments are placed on the drawing where they apply, and numbered.
Discuss Everyone replies in the same thread, against the same numbered comment.
Track Each comment carries a status until it is closed out.
Revise The next revision arrives; earlier comments stay tied to the one they were raised against.
Send back The review exports as a comment plan PDF and an Excel comment list.

Everything in Xenmark exists to move a drawing through those six steps and produce something you can send back. That narrow scope is deliberate.

What people weigh it against

Teams choosing how to run a drawing review usually also look at PDF markup and annotation tools such as Bluebeam Revu, Drawboard Projects, Adobe Acrobat, Foxit PDF Editor, PDF-XChange Editor or Annotably; at visual review and approval platforms such as zipBoard; at construction field platforms such as Fieldwire, PlanRadar or Procore Drawings; at BIM coordination software such as Revizto; and at project information and document management systems such as Oracle Aconex, Newforma Project Center or Trimble ProjectSight.

We mention these products because they are tools people commonly consider for the same work. This page does not make detailed claims about other products — those are kept to the individual comparison pages, where they can be sourced and dated.

When a different tool suits the job

Xenmark is built narrowly on purpose. Some work sits outside that scope, and it is more useful to say which work than to list features:

Pricing work from a drawing Quantity take-off and estimating are their own discipline. Measuring to explain a comment is not the same job as measuring to cost one.
Drawing the drawings Xenmark works on the PDF a CAD package produced. Authoring and editing the model belongs upstream.
Keeping the permanent record A review ends and its archive is downloaded. Long-term document control belongs in the system that already holds your project records.
Running the whole project RFIs, submittals, procurement and schedule sit above the drawing review, in a construction or project-management platform.
Heavy work on the PDF file itself Batch processing, redaction, forms and page assembly are better handled in a full PDF editor.

None of that rules Xenmark out alongside those tools — a review still has to happen, and it still has to be sent back. It just means the review is the part Xenmark is for.

How we write our comparisons

We sell Xenmark, so our comparison pages are not independent reviews and do not pretend to be. What they can be is accurate and checkable:

One page per competitor. No league tables, no scores, no winner column.
Every factual claim about another product is taken from that company's own material — its product documentation where it publishes any, and its public product and pricing pages where it does not.
Where a company publishes no documentation on a point, the page says so rather than filling the gap.
Every claim includes the date we checked it, so readers can see how current the information is.
Where the other product does something better, the page says so plainly.
Prices are shown as each company publishes them, on the basis each company publishes them, and are never converted between markets or adjusted for tax.

The point is not to win a table. It is that someone deciding between two products should finish the page knowing which one fits the job in front of them, including when that answer is not us.

If we have something wrong

Software changes faster than pages about software. If a claim on any of our comparison pages is inaccurate, out of date, or unfair — whether you work for the company concerned or simply noticed it — tell us at support@xenmark.app.

We will check it against the source, correct what is wrong, and update the date. A claim we cannot support comes down.

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