For drawing reviews, a survey of 250 engineering leaders in the US and Europe has suggested that the use of an AI checker trained on company standards, could automate nearly three-quarters of the work.
The survey, commissioned by Colab – itself a provider of an AI system that automatically reviews 2D drawings and 3D models – polled engineering leaders working across the automotive, consumer hardware, heavy machinery, industrial equipment and medical device sectors, each with between 1,000 to over 10,000 employees.
All surveyed expected that AI would lead to accelerated design review times and that the speed of doing this work would speed up considerably.
This is critical given the sheer amount of design reviews, with the survey revealing 70 per cent of engineering teams had reviewed between 30,000 to over 50,000 drawings globally, across their organisations, in the last 12 months.
Within the survey is the interesting data surrounding why – if it’s such a productivity win – more companies are not adopting such AI checkers. An example showed that nearly all (95.6%) of engineering leaders stated that following company design standards was either critically important or important. But existing processes are ineffective at ensuring these standards are consistently applied – the survey revealed that only 55 per cent of company design standards are documented, current and frequently used.
Smaller companies appear to be concerned that their data is not sufficiently organised for AI to be useful, with the idea of spending months on cleanup projects defeating the purpose of productivity gains.
CoLab CEO Adam Keating states that these reasons are why its AutoReview software has been designed to work with whatever data is available and any format. “You can upload your standards and guidelines as-is, and the AI will ingest and reference them,” said Keating. “We also plan to use unstructured data uploads to suggest custom design review checklists. In other words, we’re using AI not just to review your designs, but to make previously unusable data useful.”
Rounding off the survey, some 96 per cent had plans to adopt 2D AI drawing reviews in the next 1–2 years, with half moving in the next six months, suggesting that AI tools are quickly on the rise amongst manufacturers.
