I'm a PE who has been tinkering with LLMs for a few years now. Opus 5.5 does seem to be a game changer for drafting. I don't generate with python tho, I have it drive AutoCAD headlessly and use our firm's drafting standards/templates. Its a junior-level EIT at first, but I give it redlines via Bluebeam MCP and it updates the relevant CAD SOP for all future sessions.
Washington State is trying out a 'Permit-Ready Plans' program in a few cities, were pre-approved plans are offered at no cost. According to their initial study, building plans account for 5-20% of total construction costs. Software that might be able to shave 10% off new construction costs is a big deal.
A big reason LLMs can write code productively is cause software dev tends to be pretty resilient to failure. And at the pessimistic end, lots of companies can make money off buggy products, so it’s easy to hand wave the failures away. Does that hold true for architecture?
That being said, I’m certain they’ll be extremely useful in other areas such as review, auditing, etc - if those even matter for architects.
Might be nice to scope out where exactly it is good and where it is lacking ; residential vs commercial vs industrial , A vs S vs MEP, style of architecture? We need better benchmarking here to substantiate.
Agreed. Also the consistency between the different drawings would be nice to have an understanding of. This is where a higher level 3d domain model (such as IFC), do validation, interference checking etc., and generating drawings from those makes more sense (in my mind; but I'm biased). We did a quick demo once [0] but it ran out-of-date quickly due to the hardcoded model ids.
1) Permitting is slow and, at some point, if you fuck it up big enough, the inspectors will probably take further steps, but otherwise not care much. You simply won't get a permit.
2) Who will care a lot are the builders and creditors. Building is expensive and if there's a couple of months of set back because of your fantasy drawings, that's not going to be in your favor.
Which is not so say AI planning is not going to happen. It will. But at that point it's probably mostly going to work.
Civil engineering rules are mostly written in blood and costly and dangerous accidents. At least in my country. If somewhere else inspectors don't provide actual value, they should either get regulated or good riddance and AI might actually be better. I feel old, sigh...
I'm a PE who has been tinkering with LLMs for a few years now. Opus 5.5 does seem to be a game changer for drafting. I don't generate with python tho, I have it drive AutoCAD headlessly and use our firm's drafting standards/templates. Its a junior-level EIT at first, but I give it redlines via Bluebeam MCP and it updates the relevant CAD SOP for all future sessions.
Washington State is trying out a 'Permit-Ready Plans' program in a few cities, were pre-approved plans are offered at no cost. According to their initial study, building plans account for 5-20% of total construction costs. Software that might be able to shave 10% off new construction costs is a big deal.
A big reason LLMs can write code productively is cause software dev tends to be pretty resilient to failure. And at the pessimistic end, lots of companies can make money off buggy products, so it’s easy to hand wave the failures away. Does that hold true for architecture?
That being said, I’m certain they’ll be extremely useful in other areas such as review, auditing, etc - if those even matter for architects.
Pretty big claim, attention grabbing for sure.
Might be nice to scope out where exactly it is good and where it is lacking ; residential vs commercial vs industrial , A vs S vs MEP, style of architecture? We need better benchmarking here to substantiate.
Agreed. Also the consistency between the different drawings would be nice to have an understanding of. This is where a higher level 3d domain model (such as IFC), do validation, interference checking etc., and generating drawings from those makes more sense (in my mind; but I'm biased). We did a quick demo once [0] but it ran out-of-date quickly due to the hardcoded model ids.
[0] https://ai-chat.ifcopenshell.org/
I feel bad for all the inspectors who are going to have to do inspections on vibe-architected buildings in the next 12-18 months.
I doubt that's going to happen.
1) Permitting is slow and, at some point, if you fuck it up big enough, the inspectors will probably take further steps, but otherwise not care much. You simply won't get a permit.
2) Who will care a lot are the builders and creditors. Building is expensive and if there's a couple of months of set back because of your fantasy drawings, that's not going to be in your favor.
Which is not so say AI planning is not going to happen. It will. But at that point it's probably mostly going to work.
I don't. A lot of what they do is "make work" that slows down building homes and spaces with dilbert-esque nit picks.
Civil engineering rules are mostly written in blood and costly and dangerous accidents. At least in my country. If somewhere else inspectors don't provide actual value, they should either get regulated or good riddance and AI might actually be better. I feel old, sigh...