Every engineering organization knows this moment: a drawing gets approved, a PDF is created, and then it starts to travel. It’s emailed, printed, pinned to a machine, attached to a work order, or shared with a supplier. From that point on, the PDF is detached from its source of truth – the original file in Vault.
Weeks or months later, someone is standing in front of that PDF asking a simple question: Is this the latest version? Answering that question often means reading title block metadata, opening Vault, searching manually, comparing revisions, and hoping nothing was missed. The more the PDF spreads, the harder this gets.
Adding a QR code to the PDF that links you directly back to the file in Vault, solves the problem.
PDFs are not the problem. They are reliable, universal, and still the most practical way to distribute drawings beyond the CAD environment. The real issue is that once a PDF leaves Vault, it loses its context.
What usually happens in practice:
Vault already has the information needed to answer these questions. The problem is access. Title blocks attempt to solve this problem, but only display the data at the time of publication. They usually contain enough information — revision, who approved it, and when — but all of that reflects the moment the PDF was created. A title block cannot tell you whether something happened afterwards, nor whether a newer revision has since been released that replaces the one you are looking at.
What’s missing is a direct, frictionless way to go from the PDF or printed paper back to its digital origin.
The idea behind adding a QR code to automatically generated PDFs is simple: every PDF should be able to point back to its own source of truth.
When a PDF is created automatically by the Job Processor on approval or release, we know something important: this PDF represents the latest approved state at that moment. By embedding a QR code that links directly to the originating file in Vault, the PDF carries its context with it.
Scanning the QR code can take you straight to:
Instead of interpreting static information, the user is brought back into a live system where correctness can be verified immediately.
This works particularly well with the Vault Mobile App, which supports searching by QR code, where the code contains a file name or part number, as described in Autodesk’s documentation. Other clients, such as the Vault Thick Client and Thin Client, do not offer QR code search — for obvious reasons — but they do support hyperlinks. In those cases, the QR code can simply contain a direct link that opens the correct Vault object, such as a file or item, in the appropriate client. The PDF doesn’t need to explain everything — it only needs to point to the right place.
One small remark about where to place the QR code on the drawing. The first instinct could be to place it within the title-block. Apart from the complexity of calculating the correct coordinates, the title block contains information that is readable for humans. Placing the QR code there, overloads the title-block and steals space for the drawing. We suggest placing it in one corner, like the bottom left. It’s not in the way and easy to scan, without the noise of other text.
This approach only works if the PDF itself is trustworthy. That’s why automation matters.
When PDFs are created manually, there’s always uncertainty: was this generated before or after the last change? Was it overwritten? Was it placed in the right location?
By generating PDFs automatically via powerJobs as part of an approval or release process, a few important guarantees are established:
At that point, the PDF becomes a stable artifact with a live reference. Even if it’s printed or sent outside the organization, the path back to Vault remains intact.
The QR code doesn’t try to replace Vault, metadata, or lifecycle rules. It simply removes the friction of getting back to them.
Adding a QR code does require a small change. In practice, an existing powerJobs PDF publishing job is extended with a single additional step (line of code) that inserts the QR code into the generated PDF.
The new commandlet Add-PdfQrCode is fed with information that is already available at publish time — for example the file name, item number, or a direct Vault link — and embeds it as a QR code. Whether the code is meant for QR-based search in the Vault Mobile App, or as a hyperlink that opens the correct object in the Thin Client, or anything else, is a configuration decision.
If you are comfortable extending powerJobs scripts, this is typically a small, contained change. The documentation describes the available options and parameters in detail and is usually enough to assess whether this can be implemented by yourself, or you may involve a coolOrange partner or directly coolOrange.
What makes this exciting for us is that the PDF is no longer a dead end.
We built this new feature because it felt like an obvious missing piece. We’re genuinely curious to see how customers will use it and how this may further reduce downstream errors.
If PDFs are part of how your organization works — and they almost certainly are — it’s worth stepping back and asking a few questions:
If you already generate PDFs automatically with powerJobs, this is a small addition with a great impact. If not, it may be a good moment to look at how your publishing workflows are defined — and whether they will still work as your data and organization grow.
The goal is to make PDFs smarter and less isolated.
👉 See how QR codes fit into your PDF publishing workflow