An old GC made me rethink how I use AI site tools

I was talking to a GC I worked with five years back, and he said he still prefers hand sketches over AI layout planners because the AI keeps missing weird site angles. That hit me because I had been using that tool for everything, but after he said it, I checked and sure enough it missed a 15 degree corner on a bathroom floor last week. Has anyone else had AI layout tools just fail on odd spaces?

2 comments

2 Comments

andrew9161mo ago

Yeah but that 22 degree angle on your backsplash, I bet that wasn't the AI's fault entirely. Those tools use standard wall angles for their base grids, like 90 and 45 degrees, so anything weird like a 15 or 22 degree corner gets rounded off in their code. I found out the hard way when I checked the source data on one of those sites, they literally just snap to the nearest common angle. That's why your speed square trick works, you're catching the real measurement before the tool dumbs it down. Just don't blame the AI for doing what it was programmed to do, blame the people who built it to skip the hard stuff.

simontorres1mo ago

Switched to checking the AI output against a tape measure and a speed square before cutting anything. Caught a 22 degree odd angle on a kitchen backsplash last month that the tool completely skipped. Now I rough sketch the tricky spots by hand first, then use the AI for the straight sections. Saves time re-cutting mitered corners.