open-pdf-studio

Project Overview

When you need to mark a change on a drawing, measure a wall, or overlay two plan revisions to spot differences, Open PDF Studio gives you a PDF workflow built around drawing review. Maintained by the OpenAEC Foundation, it pairs a Tauri 2 + Rust backend with a SolidJS front end; the desktop app renders through a multi-process PDFium worker pool, while the browser and Android builds use PDF.js. It is released under LGPL-3.0-or-later with no account, watermark, or telemetry.

Item	Value
Platform	Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, browser
Stack	Tauri 2, Rust, SolidJS, PDFium, PDF.js
Interface languages	40
License	LGPL-3.0-or-later
AI interface	Built-in MCP server with 94 tools

Viewing, measuring, marking up, and comparing drawings all happen in one PDF window.

Key Features

• Drawing markup: highlights, shapes, clouds, callouts, text boxes, sticky notes, freehand, stamps, images, and signatures, with styles, layers, and alignment tools
• Scaled measurement: distance, area, perimeter, and angle, reading the scale embedded in a drawing such as a 1:50 plan, or calibrating it manually
• Revision compare: two PDFs side by side or overlaid, with every moved, added, and removed item listed; the example compare reports 18 changes
• Quantity take-off: count objects by category and collect counts, lengths, and areas into a schedule placed on the page or exported as CSV
• Page management: insert, delete, extract, split, rotate, reorder, and merge pages, plus deskew a skewed scan
• CAD exchange: desktop import of DWG / DXF with layers, viewports, and a measuring scale, and export of a page back to DXF / DWG
• Format exchange: XFDF annotations, BCF 2.1 issues, PDF/A validation and saving, PDF/X export, and beta IFCX (IFC5 JSON) export
• Raster and office export: pages to PNG / JPEG at 72 to 600 DPI, and text or tables to DOCX, ODT, and XLSX

Interface and Interaction

• Ribbon tabs: Drawing, Format, View, and other tabs, with a properties panel for the selected object
• Split view: the View tab splits the window into two panes with independent scrolling and zoom, one for a plan and one for a specification
• Annotation styles: clouds, callouts, and stamps carry their own style and layer, adjustable from the properties panel
• Themes: Default, Dark, and Blue themes; annotation colors stay legible on the dark theme
• Shortcuts: remappable keys plus a single-letter markup preset that jumps straight to the highlight or cloud tool
• Large drawings: the desktop build renders in a PDFium worker pool off the UI thread and uses progressive tiles for very large sheets

Target Audience

• Architects and structural engineers
• Site and project managers doing drawing reviews
• Estimators measuring and counting quantities at scale
• Design teams comparing multiple drawing revisions
• Document staff working with scans and forms

Quick Start

1. Open the browser version and drop a local PDF into the window; the file is not uploaded and a reload starts empty
2. Pick the cloud or callout tool on the Drawing tab and drag over the area to mark
3. Open the measuring tool and choose distance or area; a drawing with its own scale measures directly, otherwise calibrate against a known length
4. Adjust line weight, color, and text size on the Format tab, or apply the style to similar annotations from the properties panel
5. Save with Save As, or export PDF/X, PNG, or a quantity CSV
6. On desktop, print up to A0, run OCR, import and export DWG/DXF, and sign documents

Core Advantages

• Drawing-first: clouds, callouts, stamps, symbol libraries, and scaled measurement are designed for construction drawings, with markup and measuring in one tool
• Local-first: the browser version never uploads your file, and the desktop app works offline with no account or telemetry
• Consistent across devices: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and the browser share the same ribbon and annotation model
• AI-ready: the built-in MCP server lets a local assistant open, annotate, measure, and save documents

System Requirements

Platform	Package and requirement
Windows	x64-setup.exe (all users, admin), x64_user-setup.exe (current user), x64_portable.zip without installation
macOS	universal.dmg for Apple silicon and Intel, macOS 10.15 or later
Linux	.deb, .AppImage, and .snap for x86_64 only, plus a Nix flake
Android	open-pdf-studio-release.apk, 64-bit ARM
Browser	No installation; desktop-only features are disabled with an explanation

Notes

• Uninstall before Android upgrade: each release signs the APK with a different key, so Android refuses an over-install and uninstalling clears local settings
• Browser limits: printing, OCR, CAD import and export, PDF/X, IFC export, document protection, and signature validation are desktop-only
• Mobile rendering: the Android build has no OCR and renders with PDF.js, so very large drawings load tiles more slowly than on desktop
• MCP on by default: a fresh install listens on 127.0.0.1:9223; Settings > General can disable it or change the port
• Desktop architecture: Windows and Linux builds are x86_64 only, and there is no official Windows on ARM installer