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OCR for construction documents does not work, we fixed it

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Re: OCR for construction documents does not work, we fixed it

#91
post #56

We’re taking a different path, building a parsing engine that converts CAD (DWG/DXF) into fully structured JSON with preserved semantics (no ML in the critical path).We also have a separate GIS parser that extracts vector data (features, layers, geometries) independently, Like to know how you handle consistency and reproducibility across runs using models and how you make it affordable, especially at scale. because a…

Dumbcad line barf will not help you with that at all. There already is a format that is plain text and preserves the semantics: IFC. That's what it was made for.

We’re not just dumping primitives, we extract full CAD context including entities, layers, blocks, colors, and topology. That metadata allow reconstruct structure deterministically. IFC is great when available, but in most real-world pipelines DWG is still the source of truth, often degraded. Our focus is making that usable without relying on probabilistic vision layers. People depend on PDF for cad files due to its portability and to avoid software dependency/licensing, we aim solving that, any machine or pipeline that needs CAD or GIS data for analytics, search, or reasoning can operate on our structured output without requiring a native CAD or ESRI license.

Re: OCR for construction documents does not work, we fixed it

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a service / product you plan to offer outwardly? I'd be interested in learning more. Use case: estimation.

Happy to say that yes. We are in final round of polishing. mostly opening in couple of weeks. We are mainly targeting such uses cases where you can add CAD files into RAG or analytics or search pipeline without losing source of truth or geometry. I will definitely post here when we are ready, keep an eye and it will be free during beta, so you can play how much you want with it.

I think given the scale of projects worked on / being estimated (8 to 9 figure projects) -- it's unlikely we'd be willing to test on our real CAD files. Any chance for enterprise hosted solutions that aren't on the cloud?

Re: OCR for construction documents does not work, we fixed it

#93
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep we're constantly improving we're currently above 0.87 for doors we're thinking of adding a params for the ROC curve so that you can decide your own optimal thresholds depend on when false positive true positive rate is acceptable

Oh nice! I spend a good amount of time eyeballing drawings for overlooked details, so even finding most is a handy tool to me as my brain can skip the marked areas

Lovely. Are you in the construction space or are you a dev or both?

Re: OCR for construction documents does not work, we fixed it

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happy to say that yes. We are in final round of polishing. mostly opening in couple of weeks. We are mainly targeting such uses cases where you can add CAD files into RAG or analytics or search pipeline without losing source of truth or geometry. I will definitely post here when we are ready, keep an eye and it will be free during beta, so you can play how much you want with it.

I think given the scale of projects worked on / being estimated (8 to 9 figure projects) -- it's unlikely we'd be willing to test on our real CAD files. Any chance for enterprise hosted solutions that aren't on the cloud?

That is the catch, yes on premise air gapped will be provided, this is purely inbuilt parsers no cloud dependency. We will also have a managed dedicated environment, if you don't want to manage the complex infra yourself. Even in Hosted model, we have provision to use your own s3 storage (only used for async parsing pipeline and file will be wiped after 3 hours)so file never touches our disc. We had considered this from a customer point of view and while designing the system. In my early career i had worked in GIS industry and know the privacy and the data security that is required for CAD and GIS files.

Re: OCR for construction documents does not work, we fixed it

#97
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a job as HVAC engineer for the upgraded Oslo Airport back in 2011; started doing HVAC work for 3 weeks the rest was programming trying to make the rest of people more efficient. Made an Excel sheet with a lot of macros to manage all the drawing of the airport. That’s why I switched to programming when I continued to study, and did not want to come back before I got more experience. They even gave me a big desk…

For what it's worth I found Oslo Airport to be one of the best airport experiences I've ever had. 5 stars.

Thank you, I remember a lot of good discussions between architects and engineers. How to make it both beautiful and a good environment to be in

Re: OCR for construction documents does not work, we fixed it

#100

I know its been a few days, but have you looked into the new Bluebeam offerings and do you see that as competition for you guys? https://www.bluebeam.com/bluebeam-max/ Their first example is counting fixtures

Fair callout — Bluebeam Max does touch estimation. That said, we've talked with 20+ subs and almost none know them know exists.

The reality is people that work in construction (Excluding field work), refers to AI as a scam and compares it to the crypto hype back in 18 .. compares it to crypto in 2018 — all hype, no landing.. seriously they do not like it.

I built this selfishly. Eight months ago I wished I had a programmatic interface to interact with drawings. So I built one.

last point: our customers aren't just doing takeoffs and they aren't just subs or gc's either — they're building tools in the construction tech space and estimation is one use case. The broader opportunity is making all that structured data accessible.

great q!!

Also I didn't see Claude there "ai" tool (a bit weird they are letting the model providers own the entire interface) count any fixtures, and if it did it was probably pulling it from the markup's table which is enabled via their api, which you can technically just slap an llm on top of it. But hey kudos to them - this space is not easy. (https://developers.bluebeam.com/s/studio?language=en_US)

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