Maybe this is saying the quiet part out loud: how do you deal with bogus specs that designers end up not caring about since they're copy pasted? Is it just mission accomplished when you point out a potential difficulty?
Launch HN: InspectMind (YC W24) – AI agent for reviewing construction drawings
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Re: Launch HN: InspectMind (YC W24) – AI agent for reviewing construction drawings
#22Maybe this is saying the quiet part out loud: how do you deal with bogus specs that designers end up not caring about since they're copy pasted? Is it just mission accomplished when you point out a potential difficulty?
We see that a lot — specs that are clearly boilerplate or outdated relative to the drawings. Our goal isn’t to force a change, but to surface where the specs and drawings diverge so the designer can quickly decide what’s intentional vs what’s baggage. “Flag + context for fast human judgment” is the philosophy.
Re: Launch HN: InspectMind (YC W24) – AI agent for reviewing construction drawings
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
We price per-project based on size/complexity not % of construction cost, so there’s no conflict of interest around bigger budgets. Today our main users are architects/engineers and GC pre-con teams, but subs who catch coordination issues early also get a ton of value.
At what stage do you run this on plans? like DD, some % CD? What's the intended target timeframe? I don't see how subs get much value unless they can use it on ~80% CD for bid phases
Most teams run us late DD through CD anywhere the set is stable enough that coordination issues matter. Subs especially like running it pre-bid at ~80–100% CDs so they don’t inherit coordination risk. Earlier checks also help designers tighten the set before hand-offs, so value shows up at multiple stages. Eventually the goal is to be continuous QA tool including during construction by pulling in field data too and comparing to drawings and specs. Like drawings showed X size and field photos show Y size.
Re: Launch HN: InspectMind (YC W24) – AI agent for reviewing construction drawings
#24What kind of system to you have for parsing symbology?
Do you check anything like cross discipline coordination (e.g. online searching specification data for parts on drawings like mechanical units and detecting mismatch with electrical spec), or it wholly within 1 trades code at a time?
edit: there's info that answers this on the website. It seems limited to the common ones (e.g. elec vs arch), which makes sense.
Re: Launch HN: InspectMind (YC W24) – AI agent for reviewing construction drawings
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
At what stage do you run this on plans? like DD, some % CD? What's the intended target timeframe? I don't see how subs get much value unless they can use it on ~80% CD for bid phases
Most teams run us late DD through CD anywhere the set is stable enough that coordination issues matter. Subs especially like running it pre-bid at ~80–100% CDs so they don’t inherit coordination risk. Earlier checks also help designers tighten the set before hand-offs, so value shows up at multiple stages. Eventually the goal is to be continuous QA tool including during construction by pulling in field data too and c…
Would love to run it and give feedback if it's cheap to do so; my company just finished a bunch of projects and would love to cross reference if it catches the issues that we found by hand (assuming it's inexpensive enough). I do high rise electrical work for a subcontractor.
Re: Launch HN: InspectMind (YC W24) – AI agent for reviewing construction drawings
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most teams run us late DD through CD anywhere the set is stable enough that coordination issues matter. Subs especially like running it pre-bid at ~80–100% CDs so they don’t inherit coordination risk. Earlier checks also help designers tighten the set before hand-offs, so value shows up at multiple stages. Eventually the goal is to be continuous QA tool including during construction by pulling in field data too and c…
Would love to run it and give feedback if it's cheap to do so; my company just finished a bunch of projects and would love to cross reference if it catches the issues that we found by hand (assuming it's inexpensive enough). I do high rise electrical work for a subcontractor.
We’d love that — perfect use case. Send a recent set and we’ll run a discounted comparison so you can see what we catch vs. what surfaced during construction. If helpful, we can hop on a quick call to walk through results and collect feedback. Email me aakash@inspectmind.ai
Re: Launch HN: InspectMind (YC W24) – AI agent for reviewing construction drawings
#27What kind of system to you have for parsing symbology? Do you check anything like cross discipline coordination (e.g. online searching specification data for parts on drawings like mechanical units and detecting mismatch with electrical spec), or it wholly within 1 trades code at a time? edit: there's info that answers this on the website. It seems limited to the common ones (e.g. elec vs arch), which makes sense.
We parse symbols using a mix of vector geometry, OCR, and learned detection for common architectural/MEP symbols. Cross-discipline checks are a big focus as we already flag mismatches between architectural, structural, and MEP sheets, and we’re expanding into deeper electrical/mechanical spec alignment next. Would love to hear which symbols matter most in your workflow so we can improve coverage.
Re: Launch HN: InspectMind (YC W24) – AI agent for reviewing construction drawings
#28What kind of system to you have for parsing symbology? Do you check anything like cross discipline coordination (e.g. online searching specification data for parts on drawings like mechanical units and detecting mismatch with electrical spec), or it wholly within 1 trades code at a time? edit: there's info that answers this on the website. It seems limited to the common ones (e.g. elec vs arch), which makes sense.
We parse symbols using a mix of vector geometry, OCR, and learned detection for common architectural/MEP symbols. Cross-discipline checks are a big focus as we already flag mismatches between architectural, structural, and MEP sheets, and we’re expanding into deeper electrical/mechanical spec alignment next. Would love to hear which symbols matter most in your workflow so we can improve coverage.
I do electrical so parsing lighting is often a big issue. (Subcontractor)
One big issue Ive had is drafters use the same symbol for different things per person. One person's GFCi is another's switched receptacle. People use the specialty putlet symbol sometimes very precisely and others not. Often accompanied by an annotation (e.g. 6-15R).
Dimmers being ambiguous is huge; avoiding dimming type mismatches is basically 80% the lutron value add.
Re: Launch HN: InspectMind (YC W24) – AI agent for reviewing construction drawings
#29Not shade, and it's a small thing, but why do you list your investors as social proof here? Isn't the target persona someone who'd be at best indifferent, and at worst distrustful, of a tech product that leads with how many people invested in it? Especially vs the explanation and actual testimonials you're pushing below the fold to show that?
Totally fair callout and appreciate the feedback. We’re already testing alternative hero layouts focused purely on real customer results and example issues caught. Our goal is to win trust by demonstrating usefulness/results, not who invested in us.
where would my firms documents end up (on whos servers) to do this checking? I dont know how any firm would just hand out their cd's just like that?
Or is being that lax normal these days?
Aside: this field is insanely frustrating, the chasm between clash detection and resolution is a right ball ache...between acc, revizto, and aconex clash detection (and the like)..the defacto standard is pretty much telling me x is touching y....great...can you group this crap intelligently to get my hi rise clashes per discipline from 2000 down to 10? Can you navigate me there in revit (yes switchback in revizto is great) but revizto itself could improve.
Re: Launch HN: InspectMind (YC W24) – AI agent for reviewing construction drawings
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally fair callout and appreciate the feedback. We’re already testing alternative hero layouts focused purely on real customer results and example issues caught. Our goal is to win trust by demonstrating usefulness/results, not who invested in us.
where would my firms documents end up (on whos servers) to do this checking? I dont know how any firm would just hand out their cd's just like that? Or is being that lax normal these days? Aside: this field is insanely frustrating, the chasm between clash detection and resolution is a right ball ache...between acc, revizto, and aconex clash detection (and the like)..the defacto standard is pretty much telling me x is…
Documents are stored on AWS with strict access controls, meaning they are only accessible to the file owner and, if necessary, our engineers for debugging purposes. After the check, users can delete the project and optionally permanently delete the files from our S3 buckets on AWS.