Sometimes we just need a quick measurement on a PDF drawing file and PDF measuring tools provide the best way to do that. These tools simply measure the distance, area, parameter and so on in your PDF with AI.
There are plenty of great PDF measuring tools if you know where to look. Here are the best 10 PDF measuring tools I found and I think they are the best. They are either offline or online, and even are free to use, they all provide reliable and easy-to-use measurement tools, also other useful features.
List of 10 Best PDF Measurement Tools
- Adobe Acrobat (Best for creating and editing PDF documents)
- Bluebeam (Best for marking up and collaborating on PDF drawings)
- Foxit FhantomPDF (Best for editing PDFs in Word app)
- Kreo (Best AI-powered PDF measurement tool)
- PDF Expert (Best for Mac users to edit PDFs)
- PlanForm (Best for marking up PDF easily)
- PDF Annotator (30-day free to annotate PDFs)
- Preview (Best free PDF markup tool for Mac users)
- Foxyutils (Best online free PDF measurement tool with calibration)
- i2pdf (Best online free PDF measurement tool with great user experience)
1. Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat is surely the most complete PDF tool out there right now. You can work on a PDF for all kinds of tasks you may want to. The tools include editing texts, images, links, pages, media, 3D object, attachment, bookmarks, annotations, fields, buttons, boxes, signatures, stamps, shapes as well as redacting, OCR, optimizing, sharing, reviewing and so on.
The app offers rich measuring tools and options to help users measure an object accurately and easily. Users can measure the distance between 2 points using the Distance tool, measure a set of distances between multiple points using Perimeter tool, and measure the area of a drawing using the Area tool. You can measure an object as you want, meaning you can snap the measurement to the end/endpoint/midpoint/intersection of a line. Measuring an object might look daunting, but Acrobat offers a lot of options to help you simplify the measurement, you can change scale ratio and precision, markup label, enable or disable Ortho, show or hide the rulers. You can even export the measurement markup to Excel file and save all the measurement info in CSV format.
2. Bluebeam
Bluebeam is a premium program to mark up and facilitate collaboration on PDF drawings, also to streamline workflows in the most efficient way.
It helps professionals in the fields that use designs and drawings on a daily basis to add customizable markups, images, metadata and manage them efficiently; also let users corroborate on the same file with errors using check in/out capability, great feedback tools, reliable tracking options; and set up standardized workflows to speed up the task process.
To have a clear and visual communication on the important project information, Bluebeam builds first-class measurement tools to help team work, including length, area, volume, diameter, count, angle ,radius and so on. The measurement is done quickly and accurately, also can be shared or exported when needed.
3. Foxit PhantomPDF
Foxit offers a variety of customizable PDF tools that win when it comes to easiness, because it is laid out similarly to Microsoft Office tools. The problem: there is a bit of formatting loss, for the reason that it doesn’t have a library as huge as Acrobat to recognize and reflow the texts with same font or style, but it’s perfectly workable. I like seeing a tool that is not just copying Acrobat but cannot match at all, and for that reason I think some people will prefer the Foxit measuring tools.
The measuring tools are no difference from those in Acrobat, you can choose between Distance, Area and Perimeter, but they are in different look, you can set the parameters in the Comment Format tab. Foxit accommodates this measuring tool in the Comment ribbon, so users can work on the measurement markups as the way they work on a comment, those markups can be moved, resized, flipped, set with a status, replied, etc.
4. Kreo
Everybody today is talking about and using AI to simplify their life and work, if you are looking for an AI solution to measure PDF documents, then Kreo is the best choice.
Kreo is designed to measure the objects in a PDF file, and it does more than just this: change scale to your need, create schedule, annotate, store drawings, collaborate with team members, and share with client, etc. The tool is cloud based, and users are allowed to have a free trial of 30 days, without any limit on the file size.
The measurement tools are AI-powered, they will auto measure areas or elements in the drawing quickly, auto predict a measurement you want to create according to the first point you specify, auto find all the objects or texts that are similar to the selected one, and auto scale to match your documents’ specifications. This not only speed up your workflow, but also reduce human errors by manually measuring the objects.
And Kreo is higly customizable, allowing users to change colors, themes, systems, styles, and so on. Not only works on PDF drawings, Kreo also supports DWG, DXF, DWF, DGN, PNG, TIFF, JPG, JPEG, BMP, EMF, GIF drawings.
5. PDF Expert
Among the many PDF editor apps for Mac/iPhone/iPad, PDF Expert is always the top for its balance of simplicity, versatility, and price. The app offers a slate of editing, annotation, OCR and export tools in its Mac version, and since 2021, its iOS versions added a construction tool for iOS users to draw and measure an object in PDF.
Under the Measure tab, there are 4 tools: calibrate, distance, area, perimeter, which means you can measure the drawing the same ways as in Acrobat or Foxit, also you can calibrate a PDF to a known dimension. It is a pity that this measuring tool is only available in PDF Expert PRO for iOS, and it doesn’t have customizable options as many as others.
6. PlanForm
PlanForm is a simple and quick tool to measure PDFs, it can measure length, area, radius, angle; calibrate scale; count objects; annotate PDFs, recognize text from PDF, convert images to PDF, combine or split PDF, and organize PDF pages.
A measurement tabulate xlsx file will be created in PlanForm to provide summary and keep the file well organized.
Most of the measurement and markup tools are free to use in PlanForm, but some advanced functions, such as counting, measuring radius/angles/arc length require a VIP membership.
7. PDF Annotator
It is a Windows PDF measurement tool that offers a 30-day free trial, if measuring a PDF is just special case at this moment, you can make full use of the free version.
PDF Annotator can measure distance, perimeters in plans or drawings, also can measure ares, measure angles. Though it is mainly used a PDF annotation tool, it offers additional features, such as add stamp, create and convert PDFs, collaborate on the file, view, print, combine, split, etc.
8. Preview
If you own a Mac you don’t need any app to measure distance in a PDF, you can just open the PDF in Preview and show Inspector tool. This tool will measure distance in points, inches or centimeters.
The results can be accurate, though you may need to select an object precisely and do the match to calculate the measurement. This is useful for measuring the distance of an object with regular shapes that composed of straight lines and points.
This feature doesn’t work for all of Mac users, because you ll have to do the calculations yourself. Still, it’s nice not to have to install anything, especially when you just need to measure the distance of a simple object.
9. Foxyutils
Your choice of online PDF editors will make a big difference in the quality of your output PDF files, but regarding measuring PDF online, it doesn’t, because most of the online choices offer the same measurement tools and options. Some online PDF measuring tools, such as Foxyutil, highlight it fast service.
Foxyutils is one of the web PDF tools used by a large of population today, handling more than 10+ PDF tasks. It might not be as competent as others on several features, but needless to say, Foxyutils’s got the majority of the market when it comes to measure PDF online. It can measure distance and area, also calibrate.
10. i2pdf
If you’re looking for online PDF measuring tool other than Foxyutils, i2pdf is a top contender. This tool also gets high marks for fast speed and good user experience on the website. It is easy and safe to use, because it will auto delete your file in 30minutes.
I2pdf can measure distance, perimeter, and area in different shapes (rectangle, round, polygon). And there are 20+ PDF tools available: edit, ocr, crop, split, extract, redact, deskew, etc.
Summary
There are more third-party apps that will do the job of measuring the distance or area of an object for you. Adobe Acrobat is the best option that we’ve come across on Windows and macOS, which makes accurate and simple work of measuring parameter, area and distance, also offers powerful and complete PDF editing solutions. It’s going to take a while for online PDF measurement tools to be as powerful as offline ones, but if you want to try a AI-based solution, Kreo the cloud version, is a great choice for now to measure your PDFs smartly.
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