Understanding drawing permissions and visibility

Your permissions may let you view published drawings, manage drawings, or both. Comments, Topics, RFIs, and other connected workflows have their own permissions.

Best for: Project administrators and anyone missing a drawing action · Outcome: Identify the specific permission to review.

Drawing viewers

Users with View drawings access can generally:

• Open the Drawings page
• View published sheets and revisions
• Search drawings
• Star sheets
• Download or share drawings they can access
• Use viewer features allowed by their other permissions

Published drawings are the normal project-wide view. Confirmed but unpublished sheets do not appear in the main index for regular drawing viewers.

Drawing administrators

Users with drawing-management access can also:

• Create and manage drawing areas
• Upload, edit, and delete drawing sets
• Review and confirm sheets
• Publish and unpublish sheets
• Edit drawing and revision details
• Manage disciplines, sheet order, and tags

By default, administrators, managers, and employees can manage drawings. Subcontractors, consultants, owners, and bidders can normally view published drawings but cannot manage drawing sets. Project-specific permission settings are the final authority.

Connected-workflow permissions

Viewer modes do not all come from the drawing permission:

• Adding comment pins requires permission to add or edit comments.
• Topics have separate view, edit, and sharing rules.
• RFIs require RFI access.
• Submittals require Submittal access.
• Quality Lists and Quality Items use the Punch Lists permissions in project settings.
• Opening Takeoff mode requires permission to add or change takeoffs.

Because these permissions are separate, you and a teammate may see different pins, markup layers, or menu options on the same sheet.

Some roles, such as bidders, may be able to view drawings while RFI, Submittal, or Quality Item pin tools remain hidden.

Visibility is not the same as notification

Permissions decide what a person can access. Notification settings decide which updates they hear about. Turning off drawing notifications does not remove drawing access, and subscribing to an area does not grant permission.

Troubleshoot a missing action

If a control is missing:

1. Confirm that you're in the correct drawing area and revision.
2. Check whether the sheet is published.
3. Check whether the feature is available on your device or current view.
4. Ask a project administrator to verify both drawing permission and the connected workflow's permission.

Avoid changing a user's broad project role solely to expose one drawing tool. Adjust the specific permission when possible.

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