Create fabrication drawings using AI and cloud collections (Preview)

The AI Cloud Fabrication drawings feature creates new fabrication drawings based on finalized fabrication drawings from previous projects, which have been uploaded to a cloud collection owned by your organization. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used when classifying drawings into libraries inside the cloud collection and when looking for the best matching drawing to be used in the drawing creation. Multiple versions of the same drawing are allowed in a collection.

You can create assembly or cast unit drawings either from the best matching drawing templates using cloning or from the settings used by the best matching drawings. Single-part drawings cannot be created using the AI and fabrication drawing cloud collections but they can be created using the applied settings or other saved settings.

Tekla Structures 2025 introduces the AI Cloud Fabrication drawings functionality as a Preview feature. To find out more, see "Why Preview?" below.

To be able to use AI Cloud Fabrication drawings, you need an internet connection and a suitable license. For more information about licenses that have the AI Cloud Fabrication drawings feature available, see Supported Preview features by license.

For more information about security, visit Security white paper.

For more information about how data is used and processed, visit Transparency notice for AI system use.

If you have any ideas or questions, visit Trimble Labs. Sign in using your Trimble Identity.

Why Preview?

You are about to use a Preview version of the AI Cloud Fabrication drawings feature for evaluation purposes. Please evaluate this feature in your normal business environment. Although marked as Preview, this feature is safe to use in your normal business environment, as it does not affect the integrity of the model (database) or existing drawings. We welcome your feedback concerning the feature. In response to feedback, the feature may be enhanced, updated or discontinued without notice. As a Preview, the feature is provided "as is" without the benefit of any Trimble warranty or indemnity.

You can submit your feedback through Trimble Labs. Sign in using your Trimble Identity.

Limitations

AI Cloud Fabrication drawings does not support the creation or upload of general arrangement drawings or multidrawings. Single-part drawings can only be created using the applied settings or other local settings.
The drawing creator needs to have access to the drawing layout file and associated template files used by the drawing in the collection. If the files are missing, the drawing will not contain all the information of the template, such as title blocks or other tables. Therefore, we recommend that you use the same environment to create drawings that was used when uploading the drawings to the cloud collection.
The Smart create overrides functionality is not available in the Creation review dialog for AI Cloud Fabrication drawings.
You cannot create empty libraries.

Create AI Cloud Fabrication drawings

To create drawings using this feature, you need to have a collection of drawings in the cloud. The service can learn from your previous drawings, so the more drawings you add to your collection the better the results. For more information about creating a collection, see Manage fabrication drawing collections and libraries.

Select the assemblies or cast units in the model.

Before you select the assemblies or cast units, ensure that the Select assemblies selection switch is active.
On the Drawings & reports ribbon tab, select AI Cloud Fabrication drawings.
You can also start the command from the context menu, contextual toolbar, or Quick Launch.
The Creation review dialog is displayed.
AI looks for the best matching drawing libraries and suggests the best matching drawing templates or their settings files in the libraries for the selected objects. If a matching library cannot be found, you are prompted to select a different drawing creation method, for example, select saved drawing settings manually.
During the search, notifications appear and a spinning icon is shown in the Create column to indicate background processing.
In the Creation review dialog, do any of the following:
- Change or share the active collection: Click Collections or Share at the top. If you are not allowed to manage the access to the active collection, the button is dimmed.
- Prevent the creation of drawings for some assemblies or cast units: clear the Create checkboxes in front of the objects in the list.
- Enable or disable the desired Object visibility in the list options to control which objects are listed in the dialog:
  Assemblies: Lists selected assemblies.
  Associated parts: Lists selected parts associated to assemblies.
  Associated sub-assemblies: Lists selected sub-assemblies associated to assemblies.
  Parts: Lists all selected parts.
  Objects that have drawings: Lists objects that already have drawings. If an object already has a drawing, the row background is shown as gray, the Create column shows an icon instead of a checkbox, and a notification tells you that a drawing already exists. The disabled rows can still be selected to highlight the objects in the model and to remove the objects from the dialog.
- Add objects in the object list while the dialog is open: Ensure that the Select assemblies switch is active on the selection toolbar, select the objects in the model, and click the plus button . To delete objects from the list, select the objects and click the minus button . If the minus button is disabled, a tooltip is displayed telling you how to activate the button.
- Adjust the Smart create selection if necessary:
  - (template suggestion): This option looks for the best matching drawing libraries in the active collection and suggests the best matching drawing templates in the libraries for the selected objects. The best matching template is automatically selected, but you can also manually select another option. For template suggestions, a preview icon appears next to the best matching template. Hovering over the icon displays a preview of the drawing template. Clicking the preview icon opens the snapshot of the template drawing in the Drawing library properties dialog.
  - (settings suggestion): This option looks for the best matching drawing libraries in the active collection and suggests the settings used by the best matching drawings in the libraries for the selected objects. The best matching settings file is automatically selected, but you can also manually select another option.
  - (manual selection): This option uses the applied settings by default, but you can select any saved settings. This is the only option available for single parts.
  - When you select the settings or template suggestion, AI analyzes the properties of the selected objects, looks for a library within the active cloud collection with the properties that look closest to the properties of the selected assemblies and cast units, and suggests a library. After finding a best matching library, AI looks for the best matching template or its settings file inside the suggested library. If a matching library cannot be found, you are prompted to select a different drawing creation method manually.
- Change the library or the template or its settings file in the Create from column:
  - Click to show more information about the suggested library or the template or the template’s settings file, or to change your selection. There are two sections with small previews, one for the library and one for the template or settings file.
  - The AI label indicates that the best matching library or template or settings file is suggested by AI. There is a tooltip to help you understand the feature.
  - Top match library: For suggested libraries, the number of up-to-date drawings and the total number of drawings in the library are displayed, for example, 324/324. Click Select other to select another library under Other libraries. Only compatible libraries are suggested, containing drawings of the same drawing type and compatible drawing database version.
  - Top match templates/Top match template's settings: For suggested templates, the drawing name is displayed. For suggested template’s settings files, the name of the settings file is displayed in the following format: template_name - settings_file name, for example, [B.4] - BEAM 1. Also, the drawing layout and size information is given. Clicking Select other opens the Drawing library properties dialog in selection mode and you can select another template or settings file.
  - You can display a larger template preview by hovering over the small template preview, and open the template preview in Drawing library properties by double-clicking the small template preview.
Click Create to create the drawings.

Drawings are created based on what you have defined in the dialog. The created drawings will be added in Document manager automatically.

The Create button is disabled until all items that have a creation checkbox have a valid target library and template or settings file selected. The button is also disabled if you have not selected any objects or if your selections are not valid.

You can give feedback on the feature by clicking the Submit feedback button in the upper-right corner of the Creation review dialog.

In Document manager, you can see from the status flag in the Up to date column and from the message "Drawing cloned from cloud" in the Changes column that the drawings were created using the AI Cloud Fabrication drawings command. Additionally, the Cloning source column shows the drawing templates that were used.

A cloud icon in the In collection column indicates that the current version of the drawing has been added to the active fabrication drawing cloud collection.

Try it out!

If you would like to try out fabrication drawing creation with the AI Cloud Fabrication drawings feature without the need to create your own collections, you can do it in the default environment using the model template, AI Cloud Fabrication Drawings - Sample, created for this purpose. When you use the default environment, the fabrication drawing collection Default Sample Collection 2025 will be visible by default. The purpose of the sample model template and the sample fabrication drawing collection is to allow you to quickly try and adopt the service.

Start Tekla Structures using the default environment and create a new model using the sample model template AI Cloud Fabrication Drawings - Sample.
On the AI Cloud Fabrication drawings ribbon menu, click Collections and ensure that the Default Sample Collection 2025 collection is active.
Select assemblies in the model, for example, columns or beams.
Click AI Cloud Fabrication drawings on the ribbon and wait for AI to find the best matching library and templates or their settings files.
Click Create to create the drawings and add the new drawings to Document manager.