Bluebeam JS RAG — Step-by-step setup (Python, local)

1) What you’re building

RAGPythonLocalFAISS

You’ll create a folder of “truth” documents (your best Bluebeam JS snippets and notes). A Python ingest script will:

1. Read all docs (Markdown/Text)
2. Split them into chunks (small pieces)
3. Create embeddings for each chunk (vector representations)
4. Store them in a local FAISS index

Then, when you ask a question, Python will:

1. Embed the question
2. Search FAISS for the closest chunks
3. Return the best matching snippets (and their source files)

✅ This alone is extremely useful: it stops “where did that snippet live?” and prevents mixing Acrobat JS that Bluebeam doesn’t support.

2) Prereqs

• Windows/macOS/Linux
• Python 3.10+ installed (3.11/3.12 is fine)
• Basic command line use

⚠️ If you want to use an LLM later, you can: (a) paste retrieved snippets into ChatGPT manually, or (b) call an API or local model. This guide keeps the core RAG LLM-agnostic (so it won’t break when APIs change).

3) Step 1 — Create the project folder

Create a new folder somewhere like:

bluebeam-rag/
  docs/
  index/
  app.py
  ingest.py
  rag.py
  requirements.txt

What these are:

• docs/ = your Bluebeam JS knowledge base (markdown/text)
• index/ = FAISS index + metadata JSON files
• ingest.py = builds the index from docs
• rag.py = retrieval function you can reuse anywhere
• app.py = optional Flask web interface

4) Step 2 — Python venv + install packages

cd path\to\bluebeam-rag
python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
python -m pip install --upgrade pip

cd /path/to/bluebeam-rag
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install --upgrade pip

Create requirements.txt

faiss-cpu
sentence-transformers
numpy
flask

Install

pip install -r requirements.txt

Note: faiss-cpu installs a CPU version of FAISS (fast local vector search). Works great for a few thousand chunks.

5) Step 3 — Build your knowledge base (docs)

In docs/, create a small set of curated Markdown files. Start small (10–30 pages) and grow.

Recommended doc structure

docs/
  00_README_OFFICE_STANDARDS.md
  01_BLUEBEAM_GOTCHAS.md
  headers/
    header_fields_all_pages.md
    limit_characters_multiline.md
  page_numbering/
    page_x_of_y_willsave_willprint.md
  examples/
    full_script_header_plus_pagenum.md

Example content template (copy into each doc)

# Title (what this solves)

## Where it runs
- [ ] Console (Ctrl+J)
- [ ] Document-level JavaScript
- [ ] Field-level script (Calculate/Format/etc)

## Purpose
What this does, in plain English.

## Known limitations / gotchas
- Bluebeam quirk #1
- Acrobat-only API you must NOT use
- Page coordinates notes

## Snippet (tested)
```js
// paste working Bluebeam JS here