Carnegie Mellon University Mechanical Engineering

shimada@cmu.edu

Engineering Drawing Analysis for E-commerce

AI-powered system for understanding engineering drawings to estimate costs, delivery times, and vendor matching in e-commerce

Machine Learningmachine-learningimage-processinge-commerceengineering-drawingscost-estimation

Project Overview

The engineering drawing analysis project tackles the fundamental challenge of transforming technical drawings into actionable manufacturing intelligence for e-commerce procurement platforms. Our AI-powered system combines advanced computer vision with deep learning models to automatically interpret complex engineering drawings, extracting critical information including geometry, dimensions, tolerances, materials, and finishing specifications. The core innovation lies in developing robust algorithms that can parse varied drawing formats and styles while maintaining accuracy across different manufacturing domains. Key technical challenges include handling diverse CAD standards, recognizing hand-drawn annotations, understanding geometric relationships, and building reliable cost estimation models that consider material properties, manufacturing complexity, and production constraints.

This breakthrough technology enables instant quoting and intelligent vendor matching in online manufacturing marketplaces, dramatically reducing procurement cycle times from days to minutes. The system provides immediate cost estimates, delivery time predictions, and supplier recommendations based on capability matching, transforming how buyers and manufacturers connect in digital marketplaces. Applications span custom manufacturing services, rapid prototyping platforms, and large-scale procurement operations where technical assessment speed directly impacts business competitiveness. Our research team seeks industry partnerships for real-world validation and commercial deployment, particularly with e-commerce platforms, manufacturing service providers, and procurement software companies looking to integrate advanced AI capabilities into their technical assessment workflows.

Related publications

  1. Ortho2CAD: 3D CAD generation from orthographic drawings using vision language models

    Aditya Joglekar, Amit Regmi, Kenji Shimada, Levent Burak Kara

    arXiv preprint · 2026

  2. A Data Augmentation Method for Data-Driven Component Segmentation of Engineering Drawings

    Wentai Zhang, Joe Joseph, Quan Chen, Can Koz, Liuyue Xie, Amit Regmi, Soji Yamakawa, Tomotake Furuhata, Kenji Shimada, Levent Burak Kara

    Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering · 2024

  3. Multi-Class Entity Classification on Rasterized Engineering Drawings Using Graph Learning

    Joe Joseph, Amit Regmi, Levent Burak Kara, Kenji Shimada

    ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) · 2024

  4. Component segmentation of engineering drawings using Graph Convolutional Networks

    Wentai Zhang, Joe Joseph, Yue Yin, Liuyue Xie, Tomotake Furuhata, Soji Yamakawa, Kenji Shimada, Levent Burak Kara

    Computers in Industry · 2023

  5. Data Augmentation of Engineering Drawings for Data-Driven Component Segmentation

    Wentai Zhang, Quan Chen, Can Koz, Liuyue Xie, Amit Regmi, Soji Yamakawa, Tomotake Furuhata, Kenji Shimada, Levent Burak Kara

    ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE) · 2022

  6. Graph neural network-enabled manufacturing method classification from engineering drawings

    Liuyue Xie, Yao Lu, Tomotake Furuhata, Soji Yamakawa, Wentai Zhang, Amit Regmi, Levent Kara, Kenji Shimada

    Computers in Industry · 2022