Reading electrical drawings to count arc-flash study points
For an electrical engineering firm, we built a system that reads one-line drawings, marks every arc-flash study point for an engineer to check, and drafts the proposal. It runs inside the firm's own cloud.
Before an electrical engineering firm can quote an arc-flash study, an engineer has to go through the drawings and count every point the study will cover. It is careful work that happens before anyone has agreed to pay for it. We built a system that does the first pass.
What it does
- Reads the one-line drawings from a PDF set, including multi-file sets.
- Finds and places every arc-flash study point, color-coded by confidence, so the engineer can check the uncertain ones first.
- Drafts the proposal and opens the deal in the firm’s CRM.
- Since October 26, the firm can forward drawings to a dedicated email address and get the marked-up count and draft proposal back.
Where it runs
Inside the firm’s own Microsoft Azure account, on a model they host, since early September. Their drawings never leave their cloud.
How accurate it is, honestly
We measured it against counts the firm’s engineers had already done. Across 13 past drawing sets, it found 86% of the points the engineer marked. After a quick scope review, every job but one landed within two points of the engineer’s count.
Those are past projects we could check against, not new jobs. The firm is now testing it on live work, and that is the number we will report next.
How it started
The firm first hired us for a new website, which went live in early August with an AI assistant that answers visitor questions and sends leads to their CRM. The arc-flash work is phase two.
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