How to Add Revision Clouds to a PDF Drawing, Step by Step

To add a revision cloud to a PDF, pick your PDF editor's cloud tool and draw a scalloped outline around the changed part of the page. In Notch, open the Shapes flyout, choose Revision cloud (or press C), and drag around the change. A cloud on its own only says "something changed here", so most offices also add a delta tag with the revision number beside it.

This guide covers what a revision cloud and delta mean, the steps to draw one in Notch, Bluebeam Revu and Adobe Acrobat, how to style and tag clouds, and what to do with the old ones when the next revision is issued.

What is a revision cloud?

A revision cloud is a scalloped outline drawn around the part of a drawing that changed in a revision. Autodesk's help for AutoCAD describes the REVCLOUD command as creating a revision cloud to highlight reviewed parts of a drawing, and the same shape is used on PDFs. It tells the reader where to look so they do not have to compare the whole page.

A cloud usually comes with a delta: a small triangle holding the revision number, placed next to the cloud. The number ties the cloud to a line in the revision schedule or revision block in the title block, which lists each revision's number, date and description.

Conventions differ between firms and projects. Some use numbers and some use letters for revisions, some keep the clouds of earlier revisions on the sheet and some remove them, and some also cloud text-only changes. Notch does not enforce any of this. Check the drawing standards for your project, or the firm's CAD standard, and follow those. Anything this guide says about practice describes common use, not a requirement.

How do you add a revision cloud in Notch?

In Notch, open the page, choose Revision cloud from the Shapes flyout in the left tool rail (shortcut C), and drag a box around the change. For an irregular area, click the corners one by one instead. The tool is available on every plan, including Free, according to the Notch plans and billing docs.

Draw the cloud

1. Open the PDF and go to the page that was revised.
2. In the left tool rail, open Shapes and select Revision cloud, or press C.
3. To cloud a rectangular area, drag across it. To cloud an irregular area, click to place each point around it.
4. For a click-by-click cloud, press Enter or right-click to finish the shape. Esc, Backspace or Ctrl+Z take back the last point you placed.
5. Draw the next cloud. The tool stays armed, so you can cloud every change on the page in a row.
6. Press V to go back to Select when you are done.

The new cloud is red with no fill. Like every markup in Notch, it stays a live object: you can select it later to move it, resize it, drag its points or delete it. See marking up drawings for the full tool list.

Style the cloud

Select a cloud and open the Properties panel. Stroke color and width are there, along with a Scallop size section with Small, Medium and Large presets and a Custom field. Use a larger scallop on a big detail and a smaller one around a single dimension, so the cloud stays readable at the size people print it. Select several clouds with Shift-click to restyle them together.

Add the delta tag

1. Open the Tool chest from the foot of the tool rail and pick the Drafting library.
2. Select Revision delta and click on the page beside the cloud.
3. In Properties, set the tag's Revision field to the revision number. The tag arrives with 1 in it.

The delta tag is part of Notch's trade libraries, which need a Solo or Pro plan according to the markups docs. On the Free plan, you can draw the cloud and add a Text box with the revision number next to it.

Keep each issue on its own layer

Put each issue's clouds and deltas on their own layer, for example "Rev 3". Open Layers in the right sidebar, select New layer, click the layer to make it active, and draw. Notch's layers docs suggest a layer per review round so old rounds can be hidden but never lost. Creating layers is part of Solo and Pro.

How do you add a revision cloud in Bluebeam Revu?

In Bluebeam Revu, go to Tools > Markup > Cloud, click the Cloud icon on the Shapes toolbar, or press C. Drag for a rectangular cloud or click each point for a polygonal one. Revu also has a Cloud+ tool (K) that adds a callout text box to the cloud. The steps below come from Bluebeam's support site, checked November 3, 2026.

1. Select the Cloud tool.
2. For a rectangular cloud, drag the shape. Hold Shift to constrain it to a square.
3. For a polygonal cloud, click to place each point. Press Backspace to remove the last point.
4. Finish by selecting the first point again, pressing Enter twice or pressing C, or double-clicking the last point.

In the Properties panel (Window > Panels > Properties), set Style to Cloud to get Size, the width of the cloud segments, and Invert, which turns the segments inward. Bluebeam's Cloud tool page and Cloud+ tool page have the details.

How do you add a revision cloud in Adobe Acrobat?

Acrobat has a Cloud tool among its drawing markups. Adobe's help page on adding shapes and drawings in Acrobat, as it appeared in search results on November 3, 2026, lists the Cloud tool with the Polygon tool for closed shapes with multiple segments. Older Acrobat XI documentation puts the tool under Comment > Drawing Markups and says you click to set the start point, click for each segment, and finish by clicking the start point or choosing Complete from the right-click menu.

Adobe's page returned an access error when we opened it directly, so check the current menus in your version of Acrobat's shapes and drawings help before following these steps. Adobe's community forum has reports that the drawing tools other than freehand are missing on PDFs shared through Adobe's cloud, so draw on a locally saved copy if you do not see the Cloud tool.

What is the difference between a cloud, a highlight and a callout?

A cloud marks an area of the drawing that changed, a highlight marks text, and a callout attaches a note to a spot with a leader line. They do different jobs, and a revised sheet often uses two of them.

Notch has all four: the cloud and Callout are in the left tool rail, Select text highlights the page's own text, and the delta is in the Tool chest.

How do you find what to cloud?

Cloud what changed, and find out what changed by comparing the new page with the old one rather than by memory. A designer's own clouds are not always complete, and an overlay of the two issues shows changes that have no cloud on them.

In Notch, add the earlier issue as an overlay from the Overlays panel, align it, and read the color. The overlay sits under your markups, so you can draw the clouds directly on top of the comparison and hide the overlay afterwards. The steps are in how to compare two PDF drawings. In Revu, Compare Documents marks differences with its own orange cloud markups, covered in how to compare documents in Bluebeam.

What do you do with old clouds on a new issue?

Decide before you issue the set, because practice varies. A common approach is to clear the clouds and deltas from the previous revision and show only the current one, while the revision schedule keeps the history. Some offices keep earlier clouds, and some project standards ask for that. Follow your project's standard.

A checklist for each new issue:

1. Compare the new page with the previous issue and list every change.
2. Cloud each change, including changes in notes and dimensions.
3. Place a delta next to each cloud with the new revision number.
4. Add the revision to the title block's revision schedule with its date and a short description.
5. Hide or delete the previous revision's clouds, or move them to a layer that is off for this issue.
6. Check that every delta on the sheet has a line in the schedule, and every line has at least one cloud.

In Notch, putting each issue on its own layer makes step 5 a single toggle. The eye toggle is per person, according to the layers docs, so teammates still see a layer you hide. Delete the old clouds if they should be gone for everyone.

Frequently asked questions

What is a revision cloud on a drawing?

A revision cloud is a scalloped outline drawn around the part of a drawing that changed in a revision. It points the reader to the change. It is usually paired with a delta tag holding the revision number, which matches a line in the sheet's revision schedule.

Can you add a revision cloud to a PDF for free?

Yes. Notch's Free plan includes shapes, and the Revision cloud tool is among them, according to its plans and billing docs. The delta tag in the Drafting library needs Solo or Pro. See Notch pricing for the current plans, and check other vendors' pricing pages for their cloud tools.

How do I make the scallops bigger or smaller?

In Notch, select the cloud and use Scallop size in the Properties panel: Small, Medium, Large or a Custom value. In Bluebeam Revu, set Style to Cloud in the Properties panel and change Size. Smaller scallops suit small areas.

Do revision clouds show up in other PDF viewers?

Notch's docs say that on files kept on your device's Local Drive, markups are saved into the PDF itself as annotations, so Preview, Acrobat and Bluebeam see them. For a Cloud document, export it and open the result in the viewer your reader will use before you send it.

Next steps

Open the revised page in Notch, select Revision cloud from the Shapes flyout and cloud the first change. The markup feature page shows the tools around it, and the compare feature page shows how to find the changes first. If you are setting up the sheet for takeoff after the revision, see how to scale a PDF drawing.