diff-pdf — The Complete Guide: Seeing What Changed Between Two Drawing Revisions
diff-pdf answers a question that comes up on every project: what exactly changed in the new revision of the drawing? It compares two PDF files and highlights the differences, so you no longer have to scan a whole sheet by eye.
diff-pdf
Vaclav Slavik
Visual comparison of two PDF versions — see at once what changed between revisions of a drawing or report.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Graphical viewer — both files overlaid, with differences highlighted and zoom.
- Marked-up PDF — a new file with the changes marked, to send or file.
- Quick check — on the command line: identical or not.
- Three platforms — Windows, macOS and Linux.
- Open licence — GPL-2.0, free for any use.
What to know
The comparison is of appearance only, not of the text — which suits drawings and reports produced from the same template. The developer states that the code is provided as-is and is not under active development, so do not expect updates.
Related tools
For comparison with a detailed report plus editing — PDF4QT. For comparing text and input files — WinMerge or Meld.
PDF4QT
Jakub Melka
An open PDF editor and viewer — annotations, page organising, signing, redaction, plus a tool to compare document versions.
Get it from the vendorWinMerge
WinMerge team
Compare and merge files, folders, tables and images on Windows — see what changed between revisions.
Get it from the vendor
Meld
GNOME / Meld project
Visual two- and three-way diff and merge for files and folders, with Git and version-control support.
Get it from the vendor
PDF Arranger
PDF Arranger project
Merge, split, rotate, crop and reorder PDF pages by drag and drop — for assembling calc packages, submittals and drawing sets.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
A narrow, focused tool that saves a lot of effort when checking revisions. If you also need a text comparison, pair it with another tool.