Read Title Block from Technical Drawings Intelligently

· Written by Aylin Akseki

Available in:

TL;DR

This article discusses how Werk24's AI-powered TechRead API automatically extracts critical data from Title Blocks in technical drawings, providing insights for engineering and manufacturing teams working with technical drawings.

It can be difficult for manufacturers or online manufacturing platforms when data is trapped in the Title Block of Technical Drawings. There's often no solution to access this data in an automated way.

Whether handling incoming RFQs, estimating price or importing them to your EPR or PPS systems, Title Block contains essential information. This includes critical details about Material and General Tolerances.

If you want to build an easy searchable digital archive of your Engineering Drawings, some information is critical to such system. Key data like Designation, Drawing ID and Reference ID from the Title Blocks are essential.

This task looks easy to solve with OCR, but reality is more complex. Each individual company uses their own Title Block templates for Engineering Drawings. This makes technologies like OCR impossible to achieve the task of understanding all Title Block information.

The machine building industry demands a technical solution that is more robust and intelligent in processing Title Blocks.

Automated Solution for Reading Title Block

Animated Werk24 dashboard automatically extracting a technical drawing title block

With the aid of our advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms, Werk24's TechRead API is able to automatically and intelligently extract all essential information from Engineering Drawings regardless of your Title Block format:

  • Designation

  • Drawing ID

  • Reference ID

  • Material

  • General Tolerances

  • Revision Table

Harder Than You Thought

Though this task of extracting data from Title Block looks simple and straightforward, there are many practical challenges you have to solve:

Language: Drawings contain one or more foreign languages. Werk24 supports French, German, and English.

Werk24 interface translating multilingual title block fields into structured data

Missing Caption: A cell in the Title Block may be missing a caption. This means the description of what the content is such as "Designation" or "Drawing ID" is absent. They are often missing because it is assumed the human reading it understands its content. Werk24 uses AI technology to deduce the meaning of the content in each cell.

Screenshot showing Werk24 pairing unlabeled title block cells with the correct field names

Caption and Value Apart: Captions may not be in the same cell with the content but instead be in a neighboring cell. This causes a problem, because just reading the cell is insufficient to ensure all the content is obtained. The TechRead API can find all "Caption-Content" pairs in the Title Block to increase accuracy.

As an example, "A4" can be both a paper size and a material. If Werk24 detects a material pair elsewhere in the Title Block, it knows this "A4" refers to the paper size. However, if "A2" is also found in a Paper Size pair, then it knows the "A4" is a "Material code."

Werk24 visualization linking caption cells to their corresponding title block values

Separated Title Blocks: The Title Block itself may be hard to find, because it may be separated into different parts over the entire Drawing. These parts can even be in opposite corners. Werk24 will interpret the Drawing as a whole and retrieve all its relevant Title Block information, whatever the location or orientation.

Werk24 AI consolidating title block data scattered across different drawing corners

Applications for Customers

Our TechRead API's Title Block capabilities offer many applications that can effectively enhance your business:

  • New business Applications—When data is extracted in seconds automatically, it becomes possible to offer nearly-instant production feasibility check, pricing, quoting and direct online ordering. This is based on merely a Technical Drawing. Now you can serve your customers without a 3D model instead of rejecting them or going through a week-long process.

  • Streamlined internal systems—Werk24 helps you automatically feed feasible RFQs into ERP and PPS pipeline with all necessary information imported. This ensures data are picked up at the entry point and being used in the streamlined way across future implementations.

  • Digital archiving—As businesses seek to archive and digitize their internal systems, retrieving usable and actionable data from Drawings is more important than ever. Werk24 ensures such information is later searchable and easily accessed.

Why This Matters

The advantages in automated access to Title Block information are substantial. Automatically extracting the data means your employees are free from repetitive trivial tasks to focus on business-critical work.

This improves your bottom-line performance and ensures the accuracy and efficiency throughout your processes.

Furthermore, speedy responses increase customer satisfaction. This ensures more customers can connect to you and access your production capability through a faster, smoother experience.

Together, we will assure actionable data is functional for all your business purposes without delay. Contact us today to ensure your business needs from Technical Drawings are met and exceeded.

Schedule a Call