Newforma Project Center is an on-premise project information management platform — Newforma's own description. Drawing review is one activity inside a system that also holds document control, filed project email, transmittals, RFIs, submittals and action items across the whole project record.
Its drawing tooling is real and, in places, ahead of ours: markups never touch the source file, record documents carry issued revisions, and two revisions compare in the viewer with a colour legend. The main difference is how the review is structured. In Newforma the unit is a markup session — saved views on a drawing, filed as a project item. In Xenmark it is a numbered comment raised against a revision.
If you need the project record — every drawing, email, transmittal and RFI in one searchable place on your own servers — Newforma does a job Xenmark does not attempt. Choose Xenmark when you need to run a drawing review and hand it back without deploying a project information system. No installation, no server.
Newforma is a Windows client plus an on-premises server and does not publish prices. Xenmark opens in a browser, the Free plan runs a whole review, and the prices are on the pricing page.
Newforma gathers saved views of a drawing into a session, and each view carries its own status and its own list of comments. Xenmark is built around one numbered comment list that comes back as an Excel register and a comment plan PDF, numbered to each other.
Newforma is built to manage the broader project record over time. Xenmark is scoped around individual drawing reviews and hands you the documents at the end, to file wherever your records already live.
Every Newforma Project Center claim below is taken from Newforma Project Center's own published material and was last checked on 25 August 2026. Software changes; if something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
| Xenmark | Newforma | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting a review | ||
| Can the person running the review start free? | Yes — the Free plan runs one active review at a time, start to finish | No public free tier is listed. No price is published either. It is also installed software — a Windows client and an on-premises Info Exchange server, not a self-serve product you can sign up for online. |
| Do external reviewers need a paid subscription? | No — the people you invite read, reply and download the exports without paying | Not published. External users are invited by email to Info Exchange, set a password, and can then mark up drawings and raise action items in the browser. What that costs is not stated anywhere public. |
| Available platforms | Any modern browser — nothing to install, and the people you invite join from a link | Windows desktop for the project team, with an Outlook add-in. External users work in a browser through Info Exchange, and there is a mobile app for field reports. |
| How the review is structured | ||
| What the review is built from | A numbered comment. Anything drawn on the page belongs to that comment rather than standing on its own. | A markup session — a set of saved views on a drawing, each view carrying its own status and comments, kept as a project item that anyone opening the source drawing can find |
| Replies | Threaded under the comment, each attributed and dated, with image attachments, and carried into the register | Comments can be added to each markup, listed underneath it with the user and date recorded against each one. It is a flat comment list rather than replies threaded under a numbered comment, and longer correspondence runs in a linked action item, RFI or submittal. |
| Status workflow | Open, In progress and Closed — three fixed states, and the status travels into the Excel register | Yes, at both levels — each markup carries its own status, and the markup session has a status of its own with the log filtering by open and closed. Linked action items, RFIs and submittals then carry their own workflows on top. |
| Comment numbering | Numbers are stable — delete comment 5 and the gap stays, so a number is never reused | Numbering belongs to the linked items: RFIs, submittals and action items are logged and numbered. |
| One issue, several drawing locations | One comment can own several markers while keeping one number and one reply thread | Partly. A markup session holds several saved views of the same drawing, each a different area, gathered under one session. |
| Activity history | Every action timestamped and attributed to the person who made it | Yes — Newforma states that all activity on Info Exchange is fully tracked, including when someone downloaded what you sent |
| Revision handling | Comments stay tied to the revision they were raised against, in one workflow | This is a core strength. Record documents carry numbered revisions with an issued status, transmittals record what went out, and two revisions can be selected and compared directly in the viewer. |
| Measuring and markup | ||
| Measuring on the drawing | Length, polylength, perimeter and area, calibrated to the page scale | Length, area and a count tool for tallying objects on the drawing |
| Setting the drawing scale | Pick a standard scale, type your own, name the sheet size, or calibrate from a distance you already know | A scale is chosen from a standard list when a record document is added or modified, with a separate setting for raster images |
| Building your own reusable symbols | Check, cross, attention, arrow and cloud — five fixed review symbols, not a custom library | Yes — a managed list of stamps, six customisable pens, plus leaders, callouts, dimensions, revision clouds and whiteout tools |
| Measuring quantities for pricing a job | Not included — measurements are there to explain a comment, not to cost work | The count tool supports tallying objects |
| What comes out of the review | ||
| What you send back | The two documents come out ready to send — there is nothing to set up first, because the review was structured that way from the start | A PDF of the markup session, sent by email or posted to Info Exchange — or a formal transmittal when the drawings themselves are being issued |
| Comment plan PDF | The drawing with each comment numbered and shown where it applies | Different. A markup session exports as a PDF carrying the marked-up views over the original drawing, which is never altered. |
| Spreadsheet output | An Excel file listing every comment, numbered to match the PDF | Yes — Excel report templates driven by smart markers, customisable per activity centre, with a Markup Sessions template set alongside the RFI, submittal and action item logs. |
| Measurements in the export | Drawn on the comment plan PDF where they were placed, and listed on their own sheet in the Excel file, kept separate from the comments | Measurements are markup objects and travel on the drawing. |
| What you keep when the project ends | A single zip file — every revision's exports, the attachments and the full activity log, downloaded and stored on your side | You already hold it. The project record lives on your own servers — record documents, revisions, transmittals, filed project email and the Info Exchange activity trail. |
| Branded reports | Your company logo and text on both deliverables, inherited from Company Settings — Plus and Pro | A different thing — the Excel log templates are yours to control and brand with smart markers, rather than a branded report produced from one drawing review |
| What else each one does | ||
| Batch operations across many PDFs | Not included — a review works on one drawing set at a time | Yes — document sets, bulk file transfers and transmittals move whole drawing sets at once |
| Comparing two drawings against each other | Not included — differences get raised as comments by the people reviewing | Yes — select two revisions of a record document and compare them in the viewer, with a colour legend you can toggle to show or hide each kind of change |
| Working offline | Browser only, so you need a connection | An “offline project” in Newforma means something else entirely — a finished project archived to external media, which becomes read-only. |
| Storing documents long term | Not what it is for. You download the exports and keep them wherever your project records already live. | This is what Project Center is for — document control, record documents, filed project email and aggregate search across the whole project record. |
| CAD integrations and creating PDFs from CAD | None — a review starts from a PDF that has already been produced | No authoring, but the viewer opens BIM models and other file types beyond PDF, and there is a published connector catalogue |
| Connecting to a document management system | No integrations yet — the closing archive is a single zip you file wherever your records already live | Project Center is itself the document management system — rather than connecting to one, it is what the rest of the project connects to. |
Newforma Project Center does not publish prices and directs buyers to book a demo, so the only honest comparison is of how each product is sold. Not publishing prices is ordinary for software sold to firms and deployed on their own servers — a difference in how you buy, not evidence of expense. Xenmark prices are published, include VAT, and are read from our pricing page at build time.
| Xenmark | Newforma | |
|---|---|---|
| Billing unit | Per project capacity, monthly | Edition-based — pricing not published |
| Entry point | Free — one active review, start to finish | Book a demo. No published price, no free tier, and it is installed rather than signed up to. |
| To run a review yourself | Free | Not published — Project Center is deployed as Windows software, and Info Exchange provides the browser access external collaborators use |
| Paid range | €14.99 – €59.99 / month | Not published |
| Invited reviewers | Free — no per-user charge; 5–30 project members depending on plan | Not published. External users are invited to Info Exchange by email and can mark up there; the licensing is not stated publicly. |
| Tax basis | Including VAT | Not stated — no prices published |
Xenmark — read from live plan data at build time, 28 August 2026, so it cannot drift from our pricing page. Newforma Project Center — packaging and the three editions checked 25 August 2026 on Newforma's own product pages. Public price amounts are not published, so no figures are shown.
Newforma does not publish prices and directs buyers to book a demo. What is published is the three editions it comes in — Standard, Contract Management and Enterprise — and what each one includes, checked 25 August 2026.
None is published. It is also installed software rather than a website: a Windows client for the project team and an on-premises Info Exchange server for sharing. Xenmark runs a complete review on the Free plan, in a browser.
Not stated publicly. External users are invited by email to Info Exchange, set a password on first login, and can then mark up drawings in the browser with the Newforma Web Viewer and raise or update action items. Whether that consumes a licence is not published. Xenmark never charges for invited reviewers on any plan.
Unknowable from public information, because Newforma publishes no prices. What can be said is that Xenmark's prices are visible before you commit, start at zero, and require no deployment.
Genuinely both. The Newforma Viewer marks up drawings without altering the source file — leaders, callouts, text, dimensions, stamps, revision clouds and whiteout, across six customisable pens — and it measures length and area and counts objects. Markups are saved as a session and filed against the project.
It produces Excel reports from its logs using customisable smart-marker templates, and those templates cover markup sessions as well as RFIs, submittals and action items. The markup session itself goes out as a PDF. Xenmark produces both a register and a comment plan, numbered to each other, as standard.
Yes for drawing review; no as a replacement for the whole platform. If the job is marking up an issued drawing set and returning numbered comments, Xenmark does that and you can start today. If you also rely on Project Center to hold the project record — document control, issued revisions, transmittals, filed project email and contract administration — Xenmark replaces none of it.
Whenever the project record matters as much as the review — formal issue and transmittal, contract administration, filed project email, or a requirement that everything stays on your own servers.
We sell Xenmark, so this is not an independent review. We have tried to describe Newforma Project Center accurately, and every Newforma claim on this page rests on Newforma's own published product pages and documentation, named below. Capabilities and pricing change. Newforma Project Center feature information was last checked against that documentation on 25 August 2026, and the pricing on 25 August 2026.
Newforma's product pages are named rather than linked — their site is where Newforma sells, and it publishes no pricing page at all. Their documentation is linked, because it is the evidence for what is claimed here.
The Free plan takes a real drawing set end to end. No card, no time limit.
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