“One of the reasons we went with ComPDF was understanding that it would come with excellent technical support resources and responsiveness which you've continued to demonstrate through this process.”
—— AMS
AMS (American Modular System), an architectural firm specializing in school design and construction, developed an internal construction drawing management system to enhance collaboration and operational efficiency. Recently, they faced challenges in classifying large volumes of multi-page architectural PDF plans. To streamline their workflow and improve development efficiency, AMS turned to ComPDFKit for an effective solution to automate the categorization and management of their PDF drawings.
Customer Requirements
AMS’s requirements are common in the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) industry — they manage numerous construction plans for various projects, each containing multiple design drawings, such as detailed structural plans, hydropower plans, mechanical plans, and more. AMS needed an efficient way to classify the design drawings within each construction plan according to the specific type of drawing (e.g., structural, mechanical, etc.).
Each page of AMS’s construction plans includes key fields — Sheet No. and Title — which can simplify the classification process. Based on this, AMS’s approach was to split each plan into individual pages using these two fields. However, since the plans are stored in PDF format, categorizing them with unstructured data presented challenges. The key question was: how to efficiently extract these fields and automatically classify the architectural plans?
Apart from the unique documents, AMS requires both front-end and back-end services. On the front-end, they need a web interface that allows users to preview and annotate the classified drawings. On the back-end, AMS requires functionality for PDF splitting and key information extraction.
To solve these challenges, AMS partnered with ComPDFKit, a professional PDF solution provider.
ComPDFKit Solution
After discussions and confirmation, ComPDFKit provided AMS with a comprehensive solution that integrated both front-end and back-end functionalities to meet their needs.
Front-End Solution
This is the simplest part of the solution: AMS tried the ComPDFKit Web Demo online and integrated the Web PDF SDK into their project with a 30-day free trial license. After confirming that it met their basic requirements, AMS proceeded to explore the full solution.
ComPDFKit Web SDK enabled AMS to view and annotate classified drawings directly from any browser. Engineers could easily zoom in and out to examine details and switch between viewing modes.
By integrating a full suite of PDF annotation tools, AMS made it more convenient for their users to mark up designs—highlighting key points, drawing shapes, inserting images and links, and more. This significantly boosted collaboration among colleagues.
Additionally, Web PDF SDK supported UI customization, allowing AMS to tailor the interface to suit their team’s specific needs better, ultimately improving the overall user experience.
Back-end Solution
The core part of the solution focused on extracting key fields from the construction plans. To streamline the process and improve the data extraction accuracy, we reached a consensus with AMS engineers that split design drawings into single pages first and then OCR and extract all the Sheet No. and the Title of each page.
Surprisingly, our R&D team encountered an issue during the extraction process. When attempting to recognize and extract all the content from a split page, the complexity of the construction plan’s content and elements interfered with the algorithm. As a result, the extracted data was incomplete, and even key information—such as the two essential fields—was lost.
After analyzing the documents, we identified a solution with 100% accuracy.
Each page follows a consistent layout, split into two sections. The left section contains design drawings, which vary by project, while the right section consistently displays basic drawing information. The two fields—Sheet No. and Title—are located in the fixed right-hand section, maintaining the same position across all pages.
Therefore, ComPDFKit decided to recognize the single page and then crop the fixed right-hand area of it for further recognition and extraction.
With this crop extraction method, AMS received a complete front-end and back-end solution with 100% accuracy. The Web PDF SDK allows users to upload PDF construction plans to their management system. On the back end, the ComPDFKit .NET Core library splits the PDF into individual pages, applies powerful OCR to identify the specific section with the key fields, and then crops and re-recognizes the content. The extracted Sheet No. and Title are saved in TXT format and integrated into AMS’s database for further classification.
Privacy and Security
In the AEC industry, design drawings are valuable intellectual property, making data security a top priority for AMS. To safeguard this, they chose the offline SDK, which could be deployed on their own servers. This solution gave AMS full control over their sensitive project data, ensuring it remained secure within their local environment.
Technical Support
ComPDFKit provided AMS with detailed documentation that helped AMS seamlessly integrate ComPDFKit Web SDK and .NET Core library. Meanwhile, our responsive support team was always available to assist with any challenges. Additionally, ComPDFKit ensured continuous iteration and updates, keeping AMS’ system up-to-date with the latest features.
By integrating ComPDFKit, AMS saw significant improvements in their construction drawing management process:
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Increased Development Efficiency: The system now automatically extracts and stores the critical data fields into their database, greatly reducing the manual effort involved in classifying the drawings.
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Streamlined Project Management: With easier access to organized design drawings, AMS’s teams could quickly find the plans they needed, whether they were structural, architectural, mechanical, or others. This enhanced the flow of information throughout the design and construction processes, speeding up project timelines and improving overall collaboration.
Extended Features
AMS currently applies PDF splitting, OCR, and general data extraction, which do not incorporate AI technology. However, an advanced intelligent document processing (IDP) solution, ComIDP, is available for automating workflows and improving efficiency.
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Intelligent Information Recognition: Recognize and extract text, table, stamp, etc. with intelligent OCR.
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Intelligent Document Parsing: AI-driven document parsing for semi-structured and unstructured data.
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Intelligent Document Extraction: Intelligently understand documents and automatically extract key information.
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Intelligent Document Q&A: Ask questions about your documents and get instant, accurate answers.
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Intelligent Image Processing: Correct distortion for deformed images, and enhance text clarity and definition.
Conclusion
AMS successfully enhanced their construction drawing management system by integrating ComPDFKit PDF SDK into their workflow. The solution provided automated recognition and data extraction for optimal PDF classification and management, improving efficiency and reducing reliance on manual intervention.
If you're looking to improve your construction project management and streamline document handling, we invite you to explore our customized solutions. Let us help you take your project management to the next level with smarter, more efficient workflows.