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.
Some workspaces use the enhanced private OCR worker. If that worker is
unavailable, Semper falls back to its standard local OCR and labels the
review's extraction provenance accordingly. A failed or incomplete OCR read
never becomes a clean review.
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, open Review settings and turn on
AI scans 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
The drawing is the center of the review. Findings appear as compact numbered
markers that use the same stable numbers in the finding index, shared links,
and annotated PDF. A thin arrow leader connects each numbered callout to its
grounded region. A marker may represent more than one exact region, but it
keeps one number everywhere. The selected marker fills its number so the
drawing stays clear; its details remain in the evidence drawer.
Markers are shown only when Semper has defensible coordinates from the
finding or from an exact extracted-dimension link. Semper does not guess a
location from similar text or nearby content. Findings without an exact
location remain available under Sheet checks instead of receiving a
fabricated marker or source crop. Sheet checks remains available while
you move between sheets and names why the check is document-level — for
example, a missing master callout, title-block extraction check, revision-table
reconciliation, or scanned-document review. Select an item there to open the
same evidence drawer and disposition controls used by numbered markers.
Checks are grouped by family — completeness, consistency, standards, DFM,
and tolerancing. They 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 number in the compact finding index or on the drawing to open its
evidence drawer. The drawer prioritizes:
- What was flagged, Why it matters, and a suggested next action,
- severity, confidence, and disposition controls,
- a padded crop of the current drawing with the exact region highlighted, and
- optional rule details, deterministic evidence, audit history, and Ask AI under More evidence.
Open Extraction in the collapsed footer — or choose Tools > View
extraction details — to open the searchable Extraction Register behind
the review. It includes title-block fields, dimensions, tolerances, GD&T
frames, datums, notes, confidence, source provenance, and permanent
characteristic numbers when revision history is linked. Selecting a row pins
its exact region and pans it into view without changing a useful zoom level.
Selecting a drawing annotation selects the corresponding register row and
opens the finding evidence.
Eligible reviewers can correct a machine-read value from the register. A
correction creates an immutable overlay: the original machine extraction stays
in the evidence trace, the reason and reviewer are audited, and Semper creates
a new review generation. Earlier review and annotated-PDF versions remain
unchanged. To reverse a correction, create a superseding correction rather
than editing history.
When available, turn on Overlays > Characteristics to inspect every
grounded extracted characteristic. Findings remains the default view so a
dense drawing does not become visually overloaded.
The 40-pixel footer keeps Comments, History, Copilot, and
Extraction available without competing with the drawing. Selecting a tab
temporarily expands that panel over the lower canvas; collapse it when you are
done. From the Findings view or the queue, locate on drawing jumps to the
finding's sheet, selects it, and opens the evidence drawer.
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 preserves your current zoom. If its region is outside
the usable canvas—or hidden by the evidence drawer or expanded footer—Semper
pans it into view without changing magnification. Choose Focus region in
the drawer only when you want a closer zoom. Closing the drawer keeps the
finding selected, and selecting its number again reopens the details.
On smaller screens the finding index becomes a horizontal strip and the
evidence drawer becomes a bottom sheet, while zoom, pan, finding navigation,
Tools, and Overlays stay available.
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. Link revisions from Review settings before
using permanent numbering or registered visual comparison. Semper suggests
only exact normalized drawing-number matches, and you must confirm the
relationship; filenames, similar text, and visual resemblance never create a
lineage on their own.
Once linked, each characteristic receives a permanent positive number. The
number is retained across confirmed revisions and is never reused after a
characteristic is retired. If a semantic match is uncertain, the Extraction
Register asks a reviewer to confirm it instead of silently merging history.
Multiple findings about one characteristic share that drawing number.
The comparison workspace provides:
- Overlay for registered visual change regions on the current drawing,
- Side by side for the paired revision pages, and
- Change register for added, removed, changed, and unchanged permanent characteristics with before-and-after evidence.
Pages are aligned only when registration passes confidence and transform
limits. If alignment fails, Semper omits pixel regions, shows a warning, and
keeps the semantic comparison available. Comparison never accepts, rejects,
or corrects a characteristic automatically.
Supported PDFs use a locally hosted PDF canvas for crisp zooming. No runtime
document request is made to a third-party network. If a page cannot be loaded
or rendered by that canvas, Semper falls back to its existing local page-image
renderer while keeping the same evidence coordinates and annotations.
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.