Drawing Intelligence — your plans, read and ready
Every consented job starts with the same thing: a thick PDF pack of drawings, schedules and conditions. Reading it properly takes hours. Pricing from it takes a weekend. QSME reads it for you — and turns it into a project you can talk to.
This guide shows what Drawing Intelligence does, how to use it, and where it shows up across the platform.
What it does
Upload your building consent pack or architect drawings, press one button, and QSME reads the whole thing — every sheet, every schedule, every note. From then on:
- Your project can answer questions. Ask the AI chat "what's the cladding?", "which windows are double-glazed?", "what does the bracing schedule say?" — answers come from your drawings, and they cite the document and page they came from. If the plans don't show something, QSME says "not shown" instead of guessing.
- Your schedule of quantities fills from the plans. "Draft with AI" grounds itself in what the drawings actually show — with the assumptions and exclusions listed for you to review, never hidden.
- Tenders point trades at the right sheets. When you create a tender or contract, QSME suggests the pages that matter for that work — "Drainage layout, p.22–24" — so a plumber prices from three pages instead of wading through eighty.
- You always know what's been read. The Plan index at the top of your Documents page shows every pack, its sections, and — while a pack is being read — live progress as each section lands.
Accuracy, plainly
QSME drafts; you decide. Every extracted value stays visible and editable, every answer names its source page, and anything the drawings don't show is flagged as an assumption rather than smoothed over. That's the deal: the platform does the reading, you keep the judgement.
How to use it
- Upload your pack. Documents → drag your consent PDF in. (A prompt offers to read it on the spot.)
- Press "Read my plans." From the upload prompt, the file's ⋯ menu, or the Knowledge panel. Reading uses AI credits — one per ten pages, told to you up front, refunded if it fails.
- Watch the Plan index fill. Sections appear as they're read. Click any section to see its content — schedules come through as real tables.
- Use it everywhere. Ask the chat questions. Draft your SOQ. Create a tender and tick the suggested pages. Open any drawing, circle the work you'd price, and attach the markup to your bid.
Referencing pages instead of sending everything
Sometimes you don't want to hand over the whole pack. Two options:
- Reference pages (best on-platform): tenders and contracts carry "Referenced drawing pages" — the other party clicks and lands on that exact page. If the pack is later amended, QSME warns that the pages may have moved.
- Save pages as a file: open a section in the Plan index and press "Save these pages as a file" — a clean PDF of just those pages lands in your Documents, ready to attach or send anywhere.
When the consent changes
Councils amend consents. Upload the new version over the old document and QSME nudges you to read it again — the index updates to the latest version, and old information never leaks into answers. Version history keeps every earlier file untouched.
Connect your own AI
On eligible plans you can connect Claude or other AI assistants to QSME. Your assistant gets a query_drawing_knowledge tool — ask about your drawings from anywhere, with the same page-cited answers.
Drawing Intelligence uses AI credits from your plan. The reading is thorough, but it's a draft — always review before you price, sign, or build off it.