Quick start

Stamppa is a PDF viewer first. Most days you open a set, find a sheet, measure and mark up; Batch Stamp and the other tools are there when you need them. To practice, choose Help ▸ Open the sample drawing.

Open a drawing set

1. File ▸ Open… (Ctrl+O) opens one PDF or many; each one gets its own tab. You can also drop files on the window.
2. For a whole set, choose File ▸ New ▸ Sheet set from folder… (or Sheet set… to pick the PDFs). Stamppa reads the title blocks and builds a sheet index, so the files read as one document.
3. Click a sheet in the index to go to it. Filter sheets… narrows the list, and Search the set… finds text in every file of the set.

Find your way around

1. Ctrl+Tab goes to the next tab. Drag a tab out of the window to give it its own window, or right-click it to put it in a tab group.
2. Ctrl+0 fits the page; hold Space to pan. View ▸ Rotate view turns the view without changing the file.
3. View ▸ Split view ▸ Side by side shows two sheets at once.
4. Drawings with CAD layers show a Layers section in the pages panel. Tick a layer to show it, untick it to hide it: on screen, in print and when saved. Only shows just the layers you picked.

Measure to scale

1. Set the page scale first: Set scale… in the Measure section of the markup panel, or Calibrate… and click the ends of a known dimension.
2. Press N to measure. F8 turns ortho on or off, F3 snaps to the drawing, and typing a number gives an exact length. More in How to measure a PDF drawing to scale.

Mark up and keep track

1. Press C and drag round a change to draw a revision cloud. T adds a text box, Shift+T a callout.
2. Ctrl+L opens the markups list: status, replies, and export to CSV, Excel or a PDF summary.
3. File ▸ Save (Ctrl+S). Markups are standard PDF annotations, so Acrobat and Bluebeam show them too.

Compare revisions

1. Open the new revision and choose Review ▸ Compare with older revision…, then pick the older file.
2. The differences show on the sheet in two colors: what only the new revision has and what it removed. Next change and Previous change step through them.
3. Turn this sheet’s changes into clouds marks every change up in one step. More in How to compare two PDF drawings.

Print

1. File ▸ Print… (Ctrl+P) opens Stamppa’s print window, with a preview and the plot profiles of your printer.
2. In a sheet set, Print the set… prints every sheet in sheet order.

Batch Stamp a drawing set

When a whole set needs the same stamp (Received, Approved, For Construction), Batch Stamp does every file in one go.

1. Open Tools ▸ Batch Stamp (Ctrl+Shift+B). In a sheet set, Batch Stamp the set… opens it with the set’s files already added.
2. Design (left column): pick a template, or type a label, set the date and add your logo. Save it as a template to reuse it.
3. Sources (right column): add folders or PDFs. You can also drop them on the tab.
4. Drag the stamp on the preview to where it should go. The corner squares resize it; the round grip turns it.
5. Click Stamp files. Stamppa first checks every sheet for clear space, and tells you before stamping if the stamp would cover the drawing.

Text that fills itself in

Type these tokens in the label or the comment and Stamppa fills them in sheet by sheet:

Token	Becomes
{date} {time}	the stamp date and time
{sheet} {title} {rev}	the number, title and revision read from each sheet’s title block (or the file name if none is found)
{filename} {page} {pages}	the file name, the page and the page count
{user}	your name
{seq} {seq:4}	a running number; :4 pads it to 4 digits

Changed your mind?

Undo last run… (in the ⋯ menu of the Batch Stamp tab) puts every file back as it was. If you turn on Archive previous version, an older file with the same name moves to a Superseded folder instead of being overwritten.