Drawing archive

A drawing archive that catalogues itself: sheets go in, title fields are read off them automatically, and the result is searchable — including a measuring function that works out an area directly from the drawing.

Availability: this is a bespoke deployment, set up per customer rather than switched on from the integrations list. Talk to your Customer Success Manager about what it would take for your archive.

What it is

A digital archive for architectural and technical drawings with automatic cataloguing. It reads drawing sheets, extracts the title block — building, floor, drawing type, drawing number — and makes the archive both searchable and answerable.

It has two halves: an ingestion pipeline that processes incoming sheets and classifies them, and a query side that searches, retrieves and measures.

Use it for

• “Which drawings exist for this floor of this building?”
• “Find the drawing with this number and show it to me.”
• “What is the area of this room, measured from the drawing?”
• “Search for drawings about this, even if the wording differs.”
• “How many sheets are in the archive, and what has not been processed yet?”

Tools

Fifteen tools across two halves:

Area	Answers
Usage guide	How ingestion and querying relate — the assistant reads this first
Archive statistics	How much is catalogued, and what is still waiting
Ingestion	List what is waiting, process a single sheet as a sample, process a batch, and collect the results
Reclassification	Correct a title-block reading, or a visual classification, when the automatic pass got it wrong
Search	Find a document, search the catalogue by field, or search semantically when the exact wording is unknown
Retrieval	Get a drawing, or a preview of it
Measurement	Work out an area directly from the drawing

Data and permissions

• Your drawings stay yours. The archive is deployed for one organisation and holds that organisation’s material.
• Reclassification is a write, but only to the catalogue — the drawings themselves are never altered.

Getting started

This one is set up rather than switched on. It needs your drawing material, a decision about how title blocks are structured in your archive, and a processing run before it answers anything. Talk to your Customer Success Manager.

Limitations

• Automatic cataloguing is not perfect, which is exactly why reclassification tools exist. A title block that is handwritten, rotated or non-standard is the common failure, and it fails visibly rather than silently.
• A measured area is a measurement from the drawing, inheriting the drawing’s own scale and accuracy. It is not a survey, and it is not a basis for a contract without checking.
• It reads drawings, not models. A BIM or CAD model is a different kind of source and is not covered.
• Search quality depends on the title blocks. An archive with inconsistent title blocks is harder to search, and the catalogue reflects that rather than fixing it.