Review drawings with people outside your team

External review should not mean fragmented review

The difficult part of an external drawing review is rarely sending the file. Sending a PDF is easy. The problem begins when feedback comes back.

One reviewer returns a marked-up attachment. Another puts comments in the email body. A third sends a spreadsheet. Someone replies to an old version of the drawing, and the project team has to combine everything into a useful review record.

Xenmark keeps external feedback in the same review workspace as the drawing itself.

Invite the people who actually need to review

Create the project, upload the drawing and invite the relevant participants.

The review can include people from outside your organisation alongside your internal team.

That makes Xenmark useful for workflows such as:

• consultant and client reviews;
• customer drawing reviews;
• supplier drawing comments;
• contractor and subcontractor coordination;
• owner and engineering-company reviews;
• multidisciplinary projects involving separate companies.

Invite reviewers without buying another seat

External reviews often stall on something that has nothing to do with drawings: the reviewer does not have the software, and nobody wants to buy a licence for somebody who will comment on one drawing package.

Only the person running the project needs a Xenmark plan. The people invited into the review do not have to buy their own subscription, and there is no per-seat fee for adding them. What a participant can do depends on the role they are given:

• Editor — add comments and markups, reply, change review status and export.
• Participant — view the project content, reply to comments and export.

For a client, consultant or supplier who needs to give feedback rather than run the review, that is usually the difference between joining and asking for the PDF by email instead. Project member limits depend on the plan — see pricing for the current numbers.

Let reviewers comment directly on the PDF

External reviewers should not need to explain every drawing location in a separate document.

They can place their markup on the PDF and add the comment where it applies.

That creates a clearer handover than receiving a list such as:

Page 7, upper-right corner, near item 12: please check.

Keep replies with the original issue

External reviews often involve clarification before a comment can be closed. The reviewer raises a point, the designer responds, the reviewer adds another question, and someone confirms that the change will be made.

When that conversation happens through email, the project team has to reconstruct the history later.

In Xenmark, replies remain attached to the original review comment so the discussion can be followed in context.

Give everyone the same current review

Separate PDF copies create separate versions of the review itself.

A shared workspace avoids that.

Participants can return to the project and see the drawing review as it currently stands rather than relying on whichever marked-up attachment happens to be in their inbox.

That becomes increasingly useful as more people participate or the review remains active for longer.

Track what still needs attention

Collecting external comments is only the first part of the job. The project team still needs to work through them.

Xenmark lets comments be given a review status so participants can see which items remain active and which have progressed.

This provides a clearer shared picture than using the presence of an email reply as a proxy for whether a drawing comment has actually been dealt with.

Continue the conversation across revisions

An external review often produces a revised drawing, and the review then needs to continue.

Keeping the process organised across drawing revisions makes it easier to understand the relationship between previous comments and the updated design, rather than treating every new PDF as an unrelated review.

For recurring customer, supplier or consultant reviews, that continuity can remove a significant amount of manual administration.

Export a comment register when required

Not every organisation works in the same system.

Even when the active review happens in Xenmark, another company may expect an Excel drawing comment register as part of the formal project handover.

Xenmark can export the review comments to Excel, alongside a comment plan PDF numbered to match, giving you a portable record without forcing the collaborative review itself to happen in a spreadsheet.

A browser-based review workflow

Xenmark runs in the browser, which suits projects where the people reviewing the drawing are spread across different companies and do not necessarily share the same desktop software environment. No common desktop application has to be agreed on first.

The aim is simple: make joining the drawing review easier than creating another parallel process.