HVACVisor vs SmallPDF — Quick Breakdown (2025)
SmallPDF is basically a Swiss-army knife for PDF chores: convert, compress, merge, split. The OCR feature? It's an afterthought. Works fine on clean, typed documents; crashes hard on anything technical.
HVACVisor is built for the chaos of HVAC/MEP paperwork — diagrams, tags, legends, blurry field photos.
Where HVACVisor Wins
- Reads shop drawings
- Extracts labels/tags
- Handles low-quality scans
- Works on photos
- Deals with rotated pages
- Pulls part numbers cleanly
Where SmallPDF Wins
- Conversions (PDF → Word/Excel)
- Compression
- Bulk document actions
- Simple office OCR
Quick Comparison
| Task | HVACVisor | SmallPDF |
|---|---|---|
| Read diagrams | ✅ | ❌ |
| Extract tags/labels | ✅ | ❌ |
| Compress PDFs | ⚠️ | ✅ |
| Convert formats | ❌ | ✅ |
| OCR accuracy on tech docs | ✅ | ❌ |