The Problem
Gaylord Industries faced a significant bottleneck in their pre-sales and engineering process. Generating detailed commercial kitchen layouts for proposals was a manual, time-consuming task performed by skilled drafters. As demand grew, the sheer volume of drawing requests led to delays, inconsistent standards across the team, and increased pressure on engineering resources.
- High volume of repetitive drafting tasks consuming valuable engineering time.
- Inconsistencies in drawing standards depending on which drafter worked on the project.
- Lack of visibility for sales teams on the status of their drawing requests.
Constraints & Challenges
- Complex Geometry: Commercial kitchens vary wildly in shape and size; the automation needed to handle non-standard room layouts intelligently.
- Accuracy is Critical: These drawings are used for manufacturing and installation; errors in dimensions could lead to costly rework.
- Integration: The solution needed to fit into their existing workflow without requiring engineers to learn entirely new software ecosystems.
- Legacy Data: Leveraging existing block libraries and standards was essential to maintain continuity.
Our Approach
We treated this as a systems engineering problem, not just a scripting task. We decoupled the logic (what needs to be drawn) from the execution (the drawing process itself).
- Structured Inputs: implemented a JSON-based input format to capture requirements from the sales/specification team, eliminating ambiguous hand-written notes.
- Automated Logic Core: Built a rule engine that calculates placement, clearances, and component selection based on the input parameters.
- AutoCAD Automation: Developed robust scripts to drive AutoCAD to generate the geometry, layer management, and annotations automatically without human intervention for the initial draft.
- Tracking Portal: Built a web-based dashboard where sales reps could request drawings and track their status in real-time.
What Was Automated
Impact
Dramatic reduction in time-to-delivery for initial drawing sets, from days to hours.
100% adherence to drafting standards (layers, text styles, dimstyles) regardless of volume.
Sales and management gained real-time insight into the engineering queue and bottlenecks.
The system handles demand spikes without the need to hire temporary drafting staff.