Sheets: Viewing, Uploading, and Managing

User Personas: Admin | Project Manager

The Sheets log breaks out every sheet into an organized list, giving your team a simple, structured way to manage drawing sets. You can search and filter sheets, tag them, assign a discipline, review revisions and versions, compare one sheet against another, and download sheets with or without markups.

This article covers everything you do to an individual sheet. Anything that applies to a whole dated release of drawings, such as renaming a set, changing its issue date, or bulk editing the sheets inside it, is covered in Version Sets and Bulk Edits. Annotations, measurements, snapshots and callouts are covered in Markups: Annotations, Measurements, Snapshots, and Callouts.

To perform the actions described in this article, you must be assigned a license for the Drawings tool and have the appropriate Drawings permissions. See the Permissions table at the end of this article, and the Upload and Manage Project Drawings: Guide for the full overview.

Use the links below to jump to a topic:

• View and Manage Sheets
  • Sheets Log Features
  • Sheets View Features
• Upload Sheets
  • Edit Sheets Log Features
  • Auto-Capture Sheet Details (OCR)
  • Apply Disciplines and Tags to Sheets
    • Manage Custom Disciplines
    • Apply Disciplines to Sheets in Batch
    • Apply Disciplines and Tags to Individual Sheets
    • Create a New Sheet Tag
• Manage Sheet Revisions
  • Upload a Revised Sheet in a New Set
  • Upload a New Sheet in an Existing Set
  • View Versions of a Sheet
  • Compare Sheets
• Manage Sheets
  • Download Individual Sheet
  • Edit Sheet
  • Delete Sheet(s)
• Permissions
• FAQ
  • Why are my sheet numbers showing as pg_1, pg_2, and so on?
  • Why did sheet capture work well on one drawing set and badly on another?
  • Should I upload a revised sheet in a new set or in an existing set?
  • What do the colors mean when I compare two sheets?
  • Why did a sheet lose its discipline and tags after I uploaded a new set?
  • What is the difference between downloading one sheet and downloading an entire set?

View and Manage Sheets

1. Select Projects from the global navigation menu, then choose the desired project.
2. From the slide-out menu, select Sheets under Drawings.
3. Use the search bar and the sort and filter controls to refine the list.
4. Select a sheet to open, view, and manage it.

Sheets Log Features

Search, Sort, and Filter

• Use the search bar to quickly locate sheets by name, number, tag, or discipline.
• Select the filter button to narrow the list by discipline, tags, version sets, or sort order.

List View and Card View

Switch between List View and Card View depending on your preference:

• List View provides a compact, sortable table for quickly scanning large sets. Hovering over a sheet displays a thumbnail preview.
  • The Version column and badge identify and display the most recent version of each sheet within the set.
  • The column headers display Sheet Number and Name, Version, Set Name (reflecting the most recent set), Discipline, Date Issued, and Date Uploaded.
• Card View presents sheets as visual cards with thumbnails and quick access to details, tags, disciplines, markups, and linked items. The various icons indicate:
  • Drawing Tags applied to the sheet .
  • Disciplines assigned to the sheet .
  • Whether the sheet includes annotations . See Annotations.
  • Any callouts identified on the sheet . See Callouts.

Card View is the faster way to work through an unfamiliar set, because you are confirming the drawing itself rather than reading a row of text. It supports the same search, sort, and quick filter as the grid, it flags duplicate sheet numbers, and your filter and sort selections carry over when you switch back to List View.

Selecting a sheet always displays the most recent version of the sheet.

Take the duplicate sheet number warning seriously. A sheet number is the only thing that links a sheet to its earlier versions, so two sheets sharing a number will confuse version history and markup carry-forward from that point forward.

Additional Menu Options

Access additional menu options by selecting the three-dot button in either Card View or List View :

• View sheet and details .
• Edit details and add markups .
• Download the sheet to your computer with markups .
• Download the sheet to your computer without markups .
• Delete the sheet from the set .

Actions Button

Selecting Actions from the log opens a menu to perform the following tasks:

• Select Upload Sheets to upload a new sheet set or add sheets to an existing set. See Upload Sheets.
• Download the latest versions of all sheets as a single package including markups.
• Download the latest versions of all sheets as a single package excluding markups.

Those whole-project downloads assemble the latest version of every sheet across all of your version sets, which is a set-level task. See Download Sheet(s) for more information.

If you have filters enabled in your sheets log, the resulting download will respect the filters selected. Clear any filters if you want to ensure a set in its entirety is downloaded.

See the Navigating the eSUB Fusion Interface article for Web or Mobile for more guidance.

Sheets View Features

The Sheet View provides a detailed, interactive space for reviewing drawings, navigating callouts, viewing sheet versions, and accessing sheet details and data. This is the screen you spend the most time in, and it is the same screen the other Drawings articles refer back to. The space is divided into these main areas:

• Callouts Panel
• Sheet Viewer
• View Controls
• Details Panel
• View Toggles

These components let you easily navigate, analyze, and review markups, and quickly access relevant information.

Callouts Panel

Displays all callouts auto-detected or manually created on the sheet, on the left side of the screen.

• Select the Launch icon to navigate to the callout-referenced sheet. The sheet opens in Sheet View mode.
• Select the View icon to navigate and auto-zoom to the callout in the current sheet.

For creating and editing callouts, see Callouts.

Sheet Viewer

A high-resolution image of the sheet, filling the center of the screen, showing all drawing content, markups applied, and any callout links. The Sheet Viewer always opens on the latest version of the sheet.

View Controls

Located along the top of the viewer, the View Controls let you:

• Adjust the zoom level with the percentage drop-down menu.
• Zoom in or zoom out.
• Pan across the sheet .

Details Panel

The Details Panel runs down the right side of the screen and carries everything eSUB knows about the sheet. It also holds the Edit and More Options buttons that most of the procedures in this article start from.

• Sheet Name and Sheet Number
  Identifies key sheet information such as Sheet Number, Sheet Name, and Issue Date.
• Set
  Identifies the name of the drawing set containing the active sheet (for example Set 2). To rename a set or change its issue date, see Change a Set Name and Change an Issue Date.
• Discipline
  The discipline associated with the sheet (for example Architectural, Structural, etc.). A sheet carries one discipline only. The available disciplines can be configured by an Admin. See Manage Custom Disciplines.
• Tags
  User-created labels that can be applied to sheets at any time. Multiple tags can be added to help filter and organize drawing sets.
• Version
  Denotes the iteration of the current sheet. Versions of the same sheet are identified by the sheets on a project that share the same sheet number. The Sheet Viewer always displays the latest version of a sheet uploaded to a set. See View Versions of a Sheet.
• Linked Documents
  Displays a list of RFIs that are linked to the sheet through snapshots. See Snapshots.

View Toggles

Toggle the sheet viewer to show the information you want:

• Hide or show sheet markups .
• Hide or show sheet callouts .
  • Embedded callouts are shown or hidden. This pertains to clickable areas defined in the source PDF (for example, links to external BIM systems).
• Hide or show sheet linked callout areas .
  • Identified callouts are shown or hidden. This pertains to callouts identified during the drawings upload process or manually added.

Markup, measurement and snapshot tools are also reached from the Sheet View and are documented in Annotations, Measurements and Snapshots.

Upload Sheets

Your multi-page and single-page drawing PDFs can be uploaded into each project from the Sheets log.

1. From the global navigation menu, select Projects, then choose your desired project.
2. In the slide-out menu, open Sheets under Drawings, then select Upload Sheets from the Actions button.
3. Complete the required fields and select the PDF files to upload (single-sheet or multi-sheet files are supported). Select Next to continue.
   • Select Create New Set to add a new set or revision of drawings.
   • To add sheets to an existing set (for example additional sheets or revisions), select Choose Existing Set.
4. Review your sheets and make any necessary updates:
   • Sheets are temporarily assigned placeholder Sheet Numbers (for example pg_1, pg_2, etc.) to preserve the original order from your file.
   • Newly uploaded sheets or sheets added to the set are indicated by the icon in the Sheet No. field.

The placeholder numbers are not a failure. They hold your file order until you run Auto-Capture Sheet Details (OCR) or type the real numbers in yourself. Get the sheet numbers right before you leave this screen, because the sheet number is what future revisions match against.

To go back into a set you already uploaded and work on many sheets at once, see Bulk-Edit a Drawing Set.

Edit Sheets Log Features

The Edit Sheets Log is the review screen you land on during upload, and the same screen you return to when you bulk-edit a set later.

Search, Sort, and Filter

• Use the search bar to quickly locate sheets by name, number, tag, or discipline.
• Sort and filter options are available in List View by default:
  • In each column header, selecting the filter icon lets you search and filter that column using a text input.
  • Selecting anywhere on the column header sorts the sheets and associated data in either ascending or descending order.

List View and Card View

Switch between List View and Card View depending on your preference:

• List View provides a compact, sortable table for quickly reviewing large sets of sheets.
  • Sheet No. displays either a temporary placeholder number, a manually entered number, or an auto-captured sheet number.
  • Sheet Name shows the name of the sheet, whether manually entered or auto-captured.
  • Discipline indicates the drawing discipline (for example Electrical, Architectural, HVAC) applied to the sheet, either selected individually or assigned in batch.
  • Tags are user-created labels that can be applied to sheets at any time. Multiple tags can be added to help filter and organize drawing sets.
  • Actions
    • To open and view the sheet details, select the icon.
    • To delete a sheet, select the delete icon.
• Card View presents sheets as visual cards with thumbnails, with all column header fields displayed as editable entries beneath each thumbnail.
  • All field descriptions in Card View match those available in List View .
  • Actions
    • To open and view the sheet details, select the thumbnail of the sheet.
    • To delete a sheet, select the delete icon in the upper-right corner of the card.

Disciplines and tags you assign here are not lost the next time drawings are issued. See What Carries Forward to a New Version Set.

Batch and Multiselect

Use the checkboxes to select individual sheets, or select the checkbox in the header to choose all sheets. You can also use Shift + Left Click to quickly select a range of sheets for batch actions such as assigning disciplines, renaming, or auto-capturing sheet information.

Ensure that the status message at the top of the log confirms that all sheets are selected (for example, "6 of 6 sheets selected").

Auto-Capture Sheet Details (OCR)

The Capture Sheet Info feature automatically populates sheet numbers and names or descriptions during the upload review process. The auto-capture tool uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to extract sheet information based on user-defined areas.

Capture is something you run, not something that happens to your upload. Sheets arrive with placeholder numbers, and they keep those numbers until you either run capture or type the values in yourself.

How eSUB reads your drawings

eSUB uses a hybrid, multi-pass approach. It reads the PDF's own text layer first, which is exact because it is reading real characters rather than interpreting an image. If the PDF has no text layer, or the text-layer result is not usable, it falls back to image OCR.

That is why capture accuracy depends so much on where the file came from. A PDF exported straight out of BIM or CAD carries a text layer and reads very accurately. A PDF that is really a scan, meaning a flat image wrapped in a PDF, has no text to read, so it goes through image OCR and you should expect to correct more values by hand.

From the Edit Sheets Log:

1. Use the checkboxes to select individual sheets, or select the checkbox in the header column (List View ) or in the top-left corner next to the search bar (Card View ) to select all sheets. You can also use Shift + Left Click to quickly select a consecutive range of sheets.
   • When selecting all sheets, confirm the status message at the top of the log indicates a full selection (for example, "6 of 6 sheets selected").
2. Once your selection is confirmed, select Capture Sheet Info.
   • The viewer zooms to the approximate area of the title block where the Sheet Number and Name are typically located. If this area is incorrect, use the View Controls to pan and zoom to the correct location.
3. Select Select Sheet Number and/or Select Sheet Name, then use the marquee tool to draw a bounding box around the area containing the sheet number or sheet name.
   • You can resize, reposition, or delete the rectangle as needed.
4. Select Done to capture and apply the sheet info.
5. Review the captured values in the Sheet No. and Sheet Name fields and correct anything that came through wrong. Both fields stay editable.

For the most accurate results when using Auto-Capture Sheet Details, keep the following in mind: Ensure your bounding boxes for Sheet Number and Sheet Name do not overlap with other text or graphics. Use high-quality sheets. Direct PDF exports from BIM or CAD provide the best results. Choose sheets where the title block is clean and uncluttered. Be aware that decorative or nonstandard fonts may result in misreads.

Apply Disciplines and Tags to Sheets

Disciplines and tags can be assigned during the upload review or updated later through sheet editing. Tags are project-specific, additive, and can be created at any time. A discipline is different: a sheet carries one discipline only, and the list of available disciplines is managed centrally. See Manage Custom Disciplines below.

Both disciplines and tags carry over to the next version of a sheet when a revised set is uploaded. See What Carries Forward to a New Version Set.

Manage Custom Disciplines

Disciplines group your sheets by trade or drawing type (for example Architectural, Electrical, Plumbing). In addition to the predefined disciplines that ship with eSUB, your company can create custom disciplines that fit the way your business organizes drawings, and disable any discipline so your teams only see the ones you actually use.

What you can do depends on the type of discipline:

Discipline type	What you can do to it
	Disable only. Predefined disciplines cannot be renamed and cannot be deleted. They are identified with a lock and a Predefined badge.
	Create, rename, delete, or disable. Custom disciplines are identified with a delete option and a Custom badge.

All discipline management happens inline in the grid. There is no Save button: each change is committed as soon as you leave the field.

To access the Drawings Disciplines Settings:

1. Select Settings from the global navigation menu, then select Documents > Drawings.
2. Use the column filters to filter the disciplines.
3. To make a drawings discipline unavailable, toggle the discipline off. Changes are saved automatically.

To create a custom discipline:

1. Select Add Discipline from the Actions button.
2. Type the name of the desired discipline on the new line, then press Enter. Changes are saved automatically.
   • To delete a custom discipline, select the trash icon next to it.

You can tell the two apart at a glance. A predefined discipline shows a lock and a Predefined badge, and a custom discipline shows a delete option and a Custom badge .

Apply Disciplines to Sheets in Batch

From the Edit Sheets Log, or while uploading or bulk-editing a drawing set:

1. Use the checkboxes to select individual sheets, or select the checkbox in the header column (List View ) or in the top-left corner next to the search bar (Card View ) to select all sheets. You can also use Shift + Left Click to quickly select a consecutive range of sheets.
2. Once your selection is confirmed, select Apply Discipline.
3. Choose the appropriate discipline from the side-panel, then select Done.

Because a sheet carries one discipline only, applying a discipline to a selection replaces whatever discipline those sheets already had. Tags behave differently and are additive.

Apply Disciplines and Tags to Individual Sheets

From the Edit Sheets Log:

1. Select the appropriate field in List View or Card View on the sheet to assign a discipline or choose from previously created tags.

You can also assign a discipline while viewing an individual sheet from the Details Panel:

1. Select Edit, then open the Discipline drop-down menu in the sheet side-panel.
2. Select the appropriate sheet discipline.
3. Select Save.

Create a New Sheet Tag

Tags can be created during the initial upload process from the Edit Sheets Log, or when viewing sheets at any time from the Details Panel.

1. Select the Tags field and enter the name of the new tag, then press Enter to add it.
2. Select the checkbox on the new tag to apply it to the sheet.

Manage Sheet Revisions

The Version column and badge identify and display the most recent version of each sheet within the set.

Upload a Revised Sheet in a New Set

Sheet revisions are automatically detected when uploaded sheets share the same sheet number as an existing sheet. To upload revised sheets, simply upload them as a new set. The system automatically recognizes the matching sheet numbers and groups the revisions together in the Sheets Log.

This ensures that revised sheets are automatically connected to their earlier versions, helping maintain clear version control and preventing multiple conflicting copies.

Upload a New Sheet in an Existing Set

If a new sheet is uploaded to an existing set where the sheet number does not match any sheet number already in that set, the system treats it as a brand-new sheet. A new is created for that sheet, and it appears in the Sheets Log with its own sheet details, tags, discipline, and version history beginning at .

This lets you expand a sheet set with additional drawings without affecting the versioning of existing sheets.

View Versions of a Sheet

Older versions of a sheet can be viewed in the Sheets View Details Panel.

From the Sheets Log:

1. Select a sheet to view it, opening the Sheets View, then select the desired version under Versions.
   • The Sheets Viewer always displays the latest version of a sheet uploaded to a set, indicated by Currently Viewing.
   • Older versions of sheets can be viewed by selecting the prior available versions in the Details Panel and selecting View Sheet.

Compare Sheets

The Compare tool overlays two sheets so you can quickly identify changes between them. The colors are fixed and mean the following:

• Blue is the current sheet, the one you were already looking at when you opened Compare.
• Red is the comparison sheet, the one you picked to compare against.
• Black is geometry that appears in both sheets, meaning it did not change.

From the Sheets Log:

1. Select a sheet from the log to open the Sheets View.
2. In the Details Panel, choose More Options.
3. Select Compare.
   • To compare the currently viewed sheet with another version of the same sheet, select Versions in this Set.
   • To compare the currently viewed sheet with a different sheet in the same version, select Other available sheets (current version only).
4. Select the desired sheet from the drop-down menu to view and analyze the comparison.
5. Download the overlay if you need to send the comparison to someone outside eSUB.

If you are comparing a sheet against an older version of itself, the rhyme "Blue is New, Red is Dead" is an easy way to remember which is which: Blue is the sheet you are on, which is the newer one. Red is the older version you are comparing against. Black is overlap that is unchanged between the two. The rhyme only holds when the comparison sheet is genuinely the older one. If you compare against a different sheet rather than an earlier version, read the colors as current and comparison instead.

Manage Sheets

The Manage Sheets tools let your team keep drawings accurate, organized, and actionable throughout the project lifecycle. You can download sheets to submit as redlines or as-builts, edit and update sheet details, and delete unneeded and out-of-scope sheets. For adding annotations, taking measurements, creating snapshots and working with callouts, see Markups: Annotations, Measurements, Snapshots, and Callouts.

Download Sheet(s)

Every sheet and set download comes in two forms.

• Download with Markup gives you the drawing(s) with the published annotations burned in, which is what you want for a redline or an as-built submission. 
• Download without Markup gives you the clean drawing(s). 

Both are available from the sheet itself and from the log.

From the Sheets View for downloading an individual sheet:

1. Select a sheet from the log to open the Sheets View.
2. In the Details Panel, choose More Options.
   • Select Download with Markup to download the individual sheet as a PDF to your computer.
   • Select Download without Markup to download the individual sheet as a PDF to your computer.

From the Sheets Log for downloading a set of sheets (log filter options are also applied to the download):

1. Select the three-dot button on the sheet in either Card View or List View .
2. Select Download with Markup or Download without Markup.

If you have filters enabled in your sheets log, the resulting download will respect the filters selected. Clear any filters if you want to ensure a set in its entirety is downloaded.

To download many sheets at once, use the Actions button in the Sheets Log, which packages the latest version of every sheet on the project into one PDF.

Edit Sheet

From the Sheets Log:

1. Select a sheet from the log to open the Sheets View.
   • Alternatively, select the three-dot button in either Card View or List View , then select to edit details.
2. In the Details Panel, choose Edit.
3. Use the fields in the Details Panel to manually enter or update any sheet information. The editable fields are Sheet Number, Sheet Name, Discipline and Tags. For what each field carries, see the Details Panel in Sheets View Features.
   • A sheet carries one discipline only, so choosing a new discipline replaces the previous one. Tags are additive.
4. Select Save to apply your changes.

To make the same change across many sheets in a set, see Bulk-Edit a Drawing Set.

Delete Sheet(s)

From the Sheets Log:

1. Select a sheet from the log to open the Sheets View.
   • Alternatively, select the three-dot button in either Card View or List View , then select to delete the sheet from the set.
2. In the Details Panel, choose Delete from the More Options button.
3. Confirm Delete from the pop-up notification.

To remove several sheets from a set in one action, see Delete Sheets from a Set.

Deleting a sheet removes it and its markups from that set. Versions of the same sheet in other version sets are not affected.

Permissions

Drawings is a separately licensed module. A user needs both a Drawings license and the right Drawings permissions before anything in this article is available to them. Permission groups are managed by your account Admin in Company Settings > User Administration > Permission Groups.

Managing the company discipline list is an Admin task in company settings rather than a project permission. See Manage Custom Disciplines.

If an action described in this article is unavailable to you, check your Drawings license assignment first and your permission group second. See Upload and Manage Project Drawings: Guide for how both are set up, and Permission Group Descriptions for the full permission reference.

FAQ

Why are my sheet numbers showing as pg_1, pg_2, and so on?

Those are placeholders, not errors. When a PDF is split into sheets, eSUB numbers the pages in file order so nothing gets shuffled before you have had a chance to review the set. They stay that way until you run Auto-Capture Sheet Details (OCR) or type the real numbers in yourself. Do it before you leave the Edit Sheets Log, because the sheet number is what later revisions match against.

Why did sheet capture work well on one drawing set and badly on another?

Almost always because of how the two PDFs were produced. eSUB reads the PDF's own text layer first, which is exact. A drawing exported directly from BIM or CAD has that text layer, so capture is very accurate. A drawing that is really a scan, meaning a flat image saved as a PDF, has no text to read, so eSUB falls back to image OCR and you should expect to correct more values by hand. A cluttered title block, decorative fonts, and bounding boxes that overlap other text all make it worse. See Auto-Capture Sheet Details (OCR).

Should I upload a revised sheet in a new set or in an existing set?

Use a new set when the architect issues a revision, because that is what a version set represents: one dated release. Sheets whose numbers match sheets you already have become new versions of them automatically. Add to an existing set when sheets were simply missed out of that release. A sheet added to an existing set whose number does not match anything in that set is treated as a brand new sheet with its own version history. See Upload a Revised Sheet in a New Set and Upload a New Sheet in an Existing Set.

What do the colors mean when I compare two sheets?

Blue is the current sheet, the one you were already viewing when you opened Compare. Red is the comparison sheet you selected. Black is everything the two sheets have in common, so black means unchanged. When you are comparing a sheet to an older version of itself, that works out to blue being the new drawing and red the old one. See Compare Sheets.

Why did a sheet lose its discipline and tags after I uploaded a new set?

Disciplines and tags carry forward to the next version of a sheet, but the match is made on sheet number and nothing else. If the number changed between issues, or was captured incorrectly, eSUB has no way to connect the two sheets and treats the new one as a brand new sheet with no discipline, no tags, and no markups. Fix the sheet number and reapply. See What Carries Forward to a New Version Set.

What is the difference between downloading one sheet and downloading an entire set?

A sheet download gives you one PDF of one sheet, at the version you are looking at, with or without markups. A set download gives you a single PDF containing the latest version of every sheet on the project, gathered across all of your version sets rather than out of the one set you happen to be in, and also with or without markups. See Download Individual Sheet and Download Sheet(s)