Drawing Review
Drop in a 2D engineering drawing — born-digital PDF, scan, image, DXF, or
STEP — and Semper extracts the dimensions and callouts, then runs its
deterministic check set against them.
Starting a review
- Drag a drawing anywhere onto the Review view, or click Add drawing and browse from your desktop. Semper uploads it locally and starts the review automatically.
- Prefer to warm up first? Explore sample data loads a demo review when it is available in your eligible workspace. Otherwise, open Help > Getting started for the review workflow.
Scanned drawings and photos are reviewed through local OCR when your
deployment includes it: extracted callouts carry their read confidence,
low-confidence reads are withheld rather than trusted, and every OCR-based
review includes a finding asking you to confirm the extraction basis.
Born-digital drawings can show identified GD&T evidence in Overlays when
that evidence is available. An overlay is supporting review context, not a
replacement for the drawing or an inspector's judgment.
If your organization has AI enrichment enabled in
Settings, turn on the AI scans toggle in the
review toolbar to request a second AI read of scanned drawings. Reads that
agree with local OCR are promoted with their original evidence; anything
only the AI claims is listed for your review rather than trusted. Enrichment
never runs unless you ask for it and your organization's egress policy
allows it. The workspace status pill shows when a review is OCR-based, how
many low-confidence reads were withheld, and how many the AI confirmed.
Reading the results
Each finding is marked on the drawing and grouped by family — completeness,
consistency, standards, DFM, and tolerancing. Checks range from dimensional
consistency and tolerance sanity to thread callouts (missing class
designations, off-series unified and metric pitches), surface-finish
series, material callouts, and title-block completeness. Material information
and surface-finish information are presented as separate kinds of evidence so
you can assess the right requirement.
Select a finding to see:
- the source zone on the sheet it came from,
- the parsed requirement,
- the deterministic check that fired,
- its severity, and
- optional Ask AI help that explains the finding in context.
Use the Extraction inspector — a collapsible panel below the workspace —
to see the findings-plus-extraction snapshot behind the review. The
Finding locations strip maps the first findings onto sheet zones, and the
Sheets rail (collapsed automatically for single-sheet drawings) lists
every sheet with a search box for jumping between them. Your open/closed
choices for these sections are remembered.
The review dock keeps Comments, History, and Copilot beside the
canvas — switch tabs by click or arrow keys. From the Findings view or the
queue, locate on drawing jumps to the finding's sheet and selects it.
Navigating the drawing
Use the canvas controls to zoom in or out, Fit the page to the view, and
move to the previous or next finding. You can also scroll to zoom and drag to
pan. Selecting a finding recenters it while keeping its evidence open, so you
can inspect small callouts and title-block details without losing the review
context.
The Tools menu contains finding highlighting, pinned comments, markups,
and measurement. Overlays appears only when the current review has
supported evidence available to display.
Drawing and 3D model views
If the review includes a 3D file, switch between the Drawing and
3D model tabs on the stage. Semper converts STEP models for in-browser
viewing so you can compare the drawing against the modeled part.
Uploaded STEP models also get deterministic sanity checks: unreadable or
corrupt geometry, non-watertight bodies, degenerate faces, and unexpected
multiple bodies are flagged with numeric evidence. Pairing a model with a
drawing review also cross-checks the model's bounding envelope against the
drawing's largest dimension — a gross mismatch (usually the wrong model for
the drawing) is flagged for your review. Dimensional acceptance
still routes to inspector review — Semper does not read PMI/GD&T from the
model yet, and it says so on every 3D review.
Dispositioning findings
Every finding gets a decision:
- Approve finding — the issue is real; accept it.
- Mark false positive — the check fired incorrectly.
- Resolve — the issue has been addressed.
Add an owner and a comment as you go — owners stay attached when a finding
is dispositioned again later. Every disposition shows an Undo toast;
undoing reverts the record everywhere, including the server. Bulk buttons
(Accept visible, Accept minor) act on the findings matching your
current filter and sheet. Low-confidence findings route to the
review queue rather than being asserted
outright.
Prefer the keyboard? j / k move through findings, a / r / e
disposition the selection, and ? opens the full shortcut reference —
see Keyboard shortcuts.
Comparing revisions
When another drawing is available in your workspace, the Compare selector
appears in the review toolbar. Use it to diff the current review against that
drawing. The compare pane lists findings that are new in this revision, no
longer present, or changed in severity or wording.
Re-review and export
- Re-review runs the check set again — for example after uploading a new revision or changing the active review profile.
- For a PDF, Create annotated PDF makes a versioned annotated copy with visible finding markers and a finding register. The original PDF stays unchanged and is stored separately from the annotated copy.
- Share on the review page copies a link to this exact review — same document, sheet, and selected finding — for a signed-in teammate with access. When available to your role, the same menu can create or manage a read-only supplier corrective-action link. See Sharing & exports.