Spectra
AI reads the drawing.
The engineer approves.
Automated ballooning of engineering drawings, and structured extraction from the specifications around them. Spectra does the complete first pass; the engineer confirms, corrects and signs. Human-in-the-loop by design.
How it works
Four steps, and a person at the centre of them.
Spectra never releases work on the model’s word alone. The AI does the complete first pass so that the engineer’s time goes into judgement rather than transcription.
Upload the package
The engineering drawing goes into a project together with its specifications and operation sheets. PDF, XLSX, CSV, JSON and TXT are accepted today.
AI extracts
Vision-capable models read the drawing, extract the dimensions and characteristics, and place the balloons. Numbering is assigned deterministically in code, so the model never owns the identifiers.
The engineer reviews
Every proposal is confirmed, corrected or rejected by a person. Nothing is released on the model’s word alone, and every run logs the time saved.
Export
A ballooned PDF and an Excel characteristic list, or structured JSON through the API, into PLM, ERP or CAD.
“AI proposes, the engineer disposes.”
Balloon numbering is owned by code rather than by the model, so the audit-critical part of the output is reproducible, not probabilistic.
In and out
You send a drawing. You get back every characteristic on it, numbered.
Send the drawing, its specifications, and the ballooning convention your customer requires. Back come the ballooned PDF and the characteristic list. Every dimension, tolerance, note and feature control frame gets a number, and a callout covering several features expands: 6X ⌀ 6.60 becomes six characteristics, because inspection has to measure six holes.
| No. | Characteristic | Nominal | Tolerance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Overall length | 42.00 | ±0.20 |
| 2 | Flange diameter | ⌀ 68.00 | ±0.10 |
| 3 | Fillet radius | R 3.00 | ±0.20 |
| 4 | Bore diameter | ⌀ 24.00 | +0.03 / −0.00 |
| 5.1 to 5.6 | Hole diameter, 6 places | ⌀ 6.60 | ±0.10 |
| 6 | True position, hole pattern | ⌀ 0.25 | datum A, B |
Illustrative part and figures. Customer drawings are never reproduced.
Exports
In whatever format the customer's package asks for.
Extraction happens once. The format it leaves in is a setting, not a rewrite: the ballooned PDF, a spreadsheet, JSON through the API, an OEM's XML schema, or plain CSV. Every value carries the sheet and zone it came from, so a figure challenged in a review traces back.
Capabilities
One platform, from the drawing to the requirement.
Ballooning is where Spectra starts, whether for a first article, a PPAP submission or an incoming-inspection plan. The same extraction, retrieval and provenance machinery then reads the specifications, operation sheets and supplier documents that surround the drawing.
Customer-specific rule sets
No two customers balloon a drawing the same way. One expands a multiplicity callout into one balloon per feature; another keeps it as a single balloon and lets the shape and colour of the mark carry the inspection method. Shape, ink, multiplicity handling and numbering order are all configuration, not a fork of the product.
Deterministic numbering
Numbering is owned by code, not by the model. Run the same drawing twice and the identifiers are identical, which is what makes the audit-critical half of the output reproducible rather than probabilistic.
Documents, versions and revisions
Drawings, specifications, operation sheets and supplier documents live in one project, each extraction pinned to the exact file version it ran against. When a revision arrives, what you review is the characteristic that moved, not the whole drawing again.
Reusable extraction templates
A product class defines what to extract once: the fields, their definitions, an example, the output type and the validation constraints. Every project of that class inherits it, so the hundredth housing costs what the second one did.
Requirement digitalization
Specifications become structured records: the value, the standard it cites, its data type, the page and clause it came from, and whether a person has confirmed it. An inferred value is marked as inferred rather than presented as stated.
Grounded chat over project documents
Ask a question in plain language and get the answer from your own files, with the source document and page attached. When a figure is challenged in a review, the sentence it came from is one click away.
Getting started
How a Spectra rollout works.
Four steps. The convention comes first, because a drawing can only be ballooned correctly against one that is already configured. Then a part you already know the answer to: nothing is taken on trust, and the first output you see is Spectra’s next to your own, on your own drawing.
- Step one
Your rule set
Ballooning conventions are configured to your customer, not to ours: balloon shape, multiplicity handling, numbering order, characteristic classification. We set them up against drawings you have already ballooned, so the configuration starts from your own ground truth rather than from a default.
- Step two
Bring us a part
One of your own drawings with its specification package, run through the rule set configured in step one. The ballooned output goes beside what your engineer produces by hand, on the same part, so the comparison is against your own work rather than a demonstration.
- Step three
Into your systems
Structured output leaves as a ballooned PDF, an Excel characteristic list, or JSON through the API into PLM, ERP or CAD. Your engineers stay in the tools they already have.
- Step four
Widen the scope
The same extraction and provenance machinery moves from the drawing to the specifications, operation sheets and supplier documents around it. The project becomes queryable rather than merely stored.