Startup DraftAid uses AI to automatically make structural steel details
The race to put AI in design is about to start. The established CAD vendors huddle over how they could implement AI. But several startups have jumped the gun. Unencumbered by legacy codebases and userbases, these startups are starting to show how AI can help with design. Last week, engineering.com detailed AI-powered architectural assistant Kend by Poliark. Here we introduce DraftAid, a small startup that has eliminated the drudge work of creating dimensioned drawings of 3D structural steel and aluminum extrusions.
Several more AI-powered CAD tools are in the wings. Watch this space.
DraftAid is the brainchild of Abdullah Elqabbany, who with an electromechanical engineering technology degree from Sheridan College in Ontario, Canada, found himself stuck making 2D views of the steel and aluminum structural members used to hold building facades on buildings.
It may come as a surprise to some that anyone is still manually making 2D views of designs. Hadn’t 3D CAD promised to make 2D views — and the paper they were drawn on — obsolete? Was it all a dream?
But 2D views have persisted to this day for one simple reason: A 2D view can be the best way to depict certain parts and details — including flat-sided sheet-metal parts and structural steel and aluminum extrusions.
Elqabbany understands this all too well. He and several friends started DraftAid, which will with the push of a button generates all necessary views of a part. The software generates such views so fast that the first time I saw it, I was sure I was seeing a canned demonstration. So, I had Elqabbany run the software routine it again, insisting that this time it be done live. It really was that fast.
You think you have seen automatic view creation and dimensioning before? This is different. The first time I saw automatic dimensioning was at a CAD user conference years ago. Solid modeling programs have for a long time been able to automatically generate front, top, side and isometric views. But automatically adding dimensions was something new back then. Watch this, said the presenter. Suddenly each view filled with dimensions. Everything was dimensioned. I mean everything. It was complete — and a complete mess.
“What you leave out is more important than what you put in,” says Mohammed Al-arnawoot, co-founder of DraftAid. Indeed, DraftAid’s minimalist view reflects Einstein’s view: make it as simple as possible, but not simpler. There are just enough dimensions and no extra ones. DraftAid produces an elegance in documentation that a veteran draftsperson would appreciate.
DraftAid is intelligent. Where a detail isn’t clearly shown, such as a side view of a hole shown with dashed lines and a centerline, DraftAid will create an orthogonal view. With a hole that appears in 10 places, DraftAid will indicate so with a note with “10X” rather than dimension each hole.
All five of the DraftAid team work in San Jose, Calif., after the startup was selected by Y Combinator for a five-month residency. The startup has received $500,000 of initial funding.
DraftAid is still a work in progress. Currently, DraftAid has no off-the-shelf product. It is closest to a salable product with a structural shape detailer. Elqabbany chose to cut its teeth on shapes he was most familiar with. By applying a combination of machine learning and rules, DraftAid will have created a great timesaver for any company that is laboring over structural shape detailing.
“DraftAid will produce a drawing that is “80 to 90% complete,” says Elqabbany. He is being modest. A quick scan of a drawing with dozens of dimensions produced, as if by magic, a result with only one mistake — and that only a leader line that touched the part. True, I only gave the software a quick review — much less than a real-life fabrication drawing would require. Dimensions were nicely grouped and spaced. Like the text answer of a GPT, it looked good. I estimate the dimensioned drawing to be 95% complete.
DraftAid is taking a conservative approach. Rather than attempt to draft all sorts of parts, it’s going from the shapes of one specific industry. We are told sheet metal parts can only be dimensioned, too, but only in the flat, without bends.
DraftAid differs from most startups because it has actual paying customers.
“We prefer to work with a customer to develop a solution,” says Al-arnawoot.
The next solution will be machined parts. Right now, DraftAid can serve structural steel engineers by reading Inventor models directly and from other CAD programs if the files are saved in STEP format. To become a big player, DraftAid will need to be able to dimension any machined part and read SOLIDWORKS files.
As the company is still enlarging its capabilities, and with nothing to sell machined part manufacturers, it has not set a price. We expect it to be in the low to mid-hundreds of dollars.
