Author: Dan Rossiter, Built Environment Standards Lead at BSI
When it comes to sharing information, no tool is as widely used as Portable Document Format (PDF). As a data format, PDF is incredibly durable. This is likely due to its adoption within widely used software, making the creation and viewing of PDFs almost frictionless. PDF is also one of the few digital formats which has persisted across its decades of use [1].
As a result, PDF has become a victim of its own success. For example, PDF is effectively the de-facto format for information being shared across construction projects. This creates two problems:
- PDF isn’t being used to its full potential; and
- The overuse (or misuse) of PDF.
The Potential of PDF
PDF, released in 1993, was initially developed by Adobe as a proprietary format. In 2008 it became an open data format once it was standardized within ISO 32000-1 and a public patent license was published [2]. Since then, PDF has been extended through the development of several specializations such as:
- PDF/A (ISO 19005-1): Developed for archiving and long-term storage;
- PDF/X (ISO 15930-1): Developed for printing; and
- PDF/E (ISO 24517-1): Developed for engineering and technical documentation.
However, in the built environment, these specializations are seldom used despite their advantages. PDF/A, for example, requires that components like fonts and images are included within the PDF file itself, to ensure that the document can be rendered correctly in the future; independent of the system used to open it.
When capturing "as-built" information or golden thread information, PDF/A may be a more effective solution that PDF for this reason.
In addition, several of the core features of PDF often aren’t used to their full potential. For example, the latest version, PDF 2.0 (ISO 32000-2) can support engineering model data and 3D views, and includes refined metadata model to capture the properties of document the objects within. Whilst many may refer to it as "dumb PDF", they often fail to acknowledge its ability to recognize text, tag objects, embed other documents, and apply metadata.
The Overuse (or misuse) of PDF
Abraham Maslow famously wrote: