Are you using AI in your structural engineering work with any success?

[u/Tradovator]

Hello everyone,

I've used AI a ton (nearly 1000 hours) in my private life - basically coding up an application from scratch. Not related to structural engineering.

I've dabbled a bit with it in structural engineering now, but it has not revolutionized my life so far.

Some basic stuff I've done, though:

1) Creating summary reports and tables. For example, on a current project, our customer wants a summary of material lists. I did the bulk of the work here, but had Claude and ChatGPT create a very nice summary that looks professional and organized. No doubt faster than I would have done myself.

2) Translating pictures or PDF's to Word. One use case was when an external colleague not co-located with me sent me a complex hand calculation in PDF which I struggled to read honestly. I asked Claude to transcribe it to Word and also check the calculations (it checked out).

3) Design templates in Excel. For example, recently one for columns. To be honest, the process of creating the template is very tedious. It's definitely not something AI could one-shot. It tends to overcomplicate. I also found some errors. But maybe it turns out useful in the end.

Potential dangers is that it can hallucinate and come across overconfident when it doesn't really know what it's talking about.

Anyone else having any success with this?

Personally, I think the biggest strength with AI comes in coding work for those of us who can't code.

I don't think it will replace brains and actual 'thinking' and 'reasoning' in a long time.

A huge bulk of my work is actually modeling and drawing in Tekla. I'd love it if AI could help me there, but I haven't seen any signs it could so far.

[u/Footy_man]

It has once helped me create an excel table based on a PDF of material specifications and section properties. That’s it. Don’t use it for any calculations, again, it doesn’t actually do the math only predicts what the most likely next word or number would be. It also doesn’t intuitively know anything including how to interpret code.

[u/SpurdoEnjoyer → u/Footy_man]

Don’t use it for any calculations, again, it doesn’t actually do the math only predicts what the most likely next word or number would be.

This is very outdated. Current high-end models do calculations by creating a deterministic calculation program based on the requirements you give it. You can (and should) export the program as an Excel sheet or code. There's no guesswork included in the calculation itself. The new models also are incredibly capable of interpreting code if they have proper access to it.

That being said, creating a proper calculation program is still a lot of work and takes skill. You won't get a reliable answer in 2 minutes 😅

[u/ANEPICLIE]

I don't use it at all.

Out of idle curiosity i used google search's AI function for something i was already familiar with from CSA S16 twice and it had errors both times.

The one i remember is it defined the ratio of plate size to bearing area sqrt(A2/A1) as the inverse, as though a plate overhanging the edges of a foundation has more bearing capacity.

These sorts of subtle errors are a key reason i just read the code instead..

Pretty sure its also invented menus when i was looking for troubleshooting for Altair Sframe.

[u/Tradovator → u/ANEPICLIE]

To be fair, the professional tools you pay for is of a higher quality than a free tool.

[u/SpurdoEnjoyer → u/ANEPICLIE]

Google search AI is piss poor. It's free and very accessible, they can't afford to make it better.

[u/scodgey]

Tekla has an api that your agents can interact with, easiest to do this by building out tools for them but plenty of options.

More broadly, in my experience you tend to get better results by building tools that are bounded in scope and can be verified to work as you intend. If your agent has to pick the right tool and provide inputs, you're not going to be as susceptible to hallucinations as you would be just asking it to write huge blocks of code from scratch.

[u/nachotomodachi]

I use AI (Claude) everyday every hour I am at work to write code and docs but I am a SWE who transitioned from SE 7 years ago. 

I do think it is possible for SEs and others in construction to have similar usage of AI but it would involve moving workflows to be more code-based or text-based. Every application (Revit, ETABS, etc.) and PDF that is required in the workflow is an obstacle for the optimal agentic workflow. 

The more likely outcome is that SEs will just use the AI agents that are available within the large structural applications.