Torspan
Ask from the lift. The answer comes with the sheet.
A question typed with a glove on comes back with the sheet number, the revision and the date under it, and the line off the sheet quoted the way it's printed. When the sheet it would need hasn't been read yet, it names that sheet and stops there.
04 It tells you what it hasn't read. By name. On your job.
The print in your hand was right in March.
Rev C came in June. The set in the truck cab is B, and the man reading it has no way to know that, because paper doesn't update. Every answer on this page names the revision it came off, and says so when the one you're holding isn't it.
One answer, one refusal. Seven minutes apart.
Same crew, same job, same phone. The second one is the reason the first one is worth anything.
M-402 · Rev C · Issued Jun 14 · Sheet note 4
“NORTH BRANCH 24x12. REDUCE TO 18x12 AFTER THIRD TAKEOFF.”
Rev C replaced Rev B on Jun 14. If your set reads 20x12, it's B.
Open the sheet
Nobody came down. Nobody called the PM. Nobody got an answer that sounded right.
Invented crew, invented job, invented sheet numbers. Nothing on this page is a real person, a real jobsite, a real building or a real drawing.
What it does
- It answers off the job's own paper. The drawings, the cut sheets, the submittals, the approved-as-noted returns that came back marked up — the set that actually governs this job, not a manufacturer's library and not general knowledge about ductwork.
- Every answer names its source. Document, revision, issue date, sheet note or page, and the line quoted the way it's printed. One tap opens the sheet at that spot.
- It says which revision is current. If the answer comes off a sheet that has been superseded, it says what replaced it and when. If your printed set is the older one, that is the sentence that saves the day.
- It says the word “no.” A sheet it hasn't read is a sheet it won't answer from — by name, out loud, in the thread, instead of assembling something plausible out of the sheets next to it.
How it works
Six steps, in the crew's sequence — not the system's.
The set arrives however it already arrives.
The PM uploads it. The office forwards it. A supplier emails a cut sheet as an attachment at 4:40 on a Friday. Mail is opened, the attachments are pulled out and filed as documents on the job — so the cut sheet that came in as an email is findable like everything else, instead of sitting in somebody's inbox.
It reads them that night.
A sheet that lands at two in the afternoon is answerable that evening. Nothing waits for somebody to remember to press a button.
What can't be read as text gets read by looking at it.
A phone photo of a plan taped to a wall, a hand-marked sketch, a scan somebody made on a copier in 2019 — those get read as images, because that is the only honest way to read them.
You ask in the same thread you say everything else in.
No second app, no folder to find first, no search syntax, no exact sheet number required. What's the drop size on the north side is a valid question.
The answer is assembled out of what's actually on the sheet.
The passage, not a summary of the neighborhood around it — and it comes back with the sheet number, the revision, the date and the location on the sheet attached to it.
If the passage isn't there, the answer isn't either.
It names the document it would have needed and stops. That is not an error state. It is the design.
There is no step where somebody organizes the drawings. No naming convention to hold to, no folder discipline to enforce on a PM who is busy, no “make sure it's in the right place or it won't work.” Sheets get filed by what's printed on them.
It shows you the bubble. You call it.
You trust a level because it doesn't lie when the wall is out of plumb. It doesn't overrule the man holding it and it doesn't tell him what to do about the wall. This works the same way: it shows you what the sheet says, with the sheet, and the call is yours.
This block is written in the future tense. Everything else on this page is not.
What it isn't allowed to do yet
There is a version of this that speaks first. A man describes a riser at 6:10. A revision that moved that riser fourteen inches landed on the 9th. Nothing on this page catches that today — he has to ask, and he has no reason to ask, because as far as he knows the sheet is right.
That capability is written. It is switched off, on purpose, and here is the honest reason: the check that would trigger it reaches the records by a path that hasn't been locked down to the same standard as everything else in this app. Until it is, it stays off, and this page keeps saying so.
01 It goes to the man first, in his own thread. Not to a dashboard. Not to his foreman first, and never to an owner first. The man doing the work gets the chance to fix it before anybody else knows there was something to fix.
02 It carries the sheet, the revision, the date and the words of his own it is matching — checkable in one tap, or it doesn't get sent at all.
03 Nothing is counted. No tally of how many a man got, no history of who gets them most, nothing that could turn into a file on somebody. That rule is not a setting and it is not a preference.
Nobody is careless here. The paper went stale, and this is a machine that reads paper.
What's in the record
Two lists. The first is what the system keeps about every document on the job. The second is what rides along with every answer. Both are readable on a phone and both come out in the export.
| Field | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Type | drawing · cut sheet · submittal · approved-as-noted return · specification · dispatch PDF · other |
| Job | The job it belongs to |
| Sheet number | As printed on the sheet |
| Revision | As printed, plus the issue date |
| Folder | Where it sits in the tree the office navigates |
| Received | Date, and how — uploaded by a named person, or the address it was emailed in from |
| Supersedes | The revision this one replaced, and the date it replaced it |
| Superseded by | Filled in the day a newer revision lands |
| Read | Yes or no, and the date it was read |
| Pages | Page count, and which pages have been read |
| Field | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Document | Sheet number or document name |
| Revision | And its issue date |
| Location | Page, detail, or sheet note |
| The line | The passage itself, quoted as it is printed |
| Link | Opens that document at that page, full screen |
| Supersession | Present only when it applies: what replaced what, and when |
| Asked by | Who asked, and when — the question and the answer both sit on the day's record, in his own words |
An answer with no source block does not exist. There is no code path that produces one.
Where the paper comes from
- The drawing set, whole or in bulletins, however the office sends it.
- Cut sheets — the ones in the truck, the ones in an email, the ones a supplier sends after the fact.
- Submittals, and the approved-as-noted returns that came back with somebody's marks on them. Those two are not the same document and the difference has consequences — see below.
- Specifications, the sections that touch this work.
- Dispatch paperwork and whatever else the office sends over that belongs to the job.
- A photo of a print. Somebody shot the plan taped to the wall because that's the only copy on the floor. It gets read, and the answer says that's what it read.
Only the job's documents. Not files on anybody's computer, not email that isn't addressed to the job, not somebody's folders. That boundary is in What it won't do, in writing, and it doesn't move.
When two documents disagree
This is the part every product in this category quietly skips, because the honest answer is unimpressive: it doesn't pick.
| What happens | What comes back |
|---|---|
| The sheet is in the job but hasn't been read | It names the sheet and stops. It will not assemble an answer out of the sheets on either side of it. |
| Two documents say different things | Both are named, with their revisions and dates. It doesn't pick the likelier one quietly, and it doesn't average them. It asks which one you're building to. |
| The current revision isn't the one you're holding | The answer comes off the current one and adds a line saying what changed and when. |
| A catalog cut sheet and an approved-as-noted return disagree | The return governs, because somebody marked it up and sent it back. The answer says which of the two it used. |
| The job has no documents at all | It says the job has no documents. It does not answer from general knowledge and let you assume it read something. |
| You ask it to approve, stamp, or decide | It can't, and it says so. Then it shows you what the sheet says. |
Everything it refused to resolve lands in one list the office can work through — both candidate answers side by side, with the question that produced them. Nothing disappears because it was hard.
The words it actually uses
These are the strings themselves, not a friendlier version of them. The same lines the app says in the thread.
| What happened | What it says |
|---|---|
| Sheet is on the job, not read | M-403 is on this job but I haven't read it. That's the sheet your question is about. |
| Job has no documents | This job has nothing in it yet. I'm not going to answer from memory. |
| Two sources disagree | Two answers here. M-501 Rev B says 14 inches. The approved return dated Jul 2 says 18. I'm not picking one — which are you building to? |
| Cut sheet vs. approved-as-noted | Using the approved-as-noted return dated Jul 2, not the catalog sheet. The return is the one that came back marked up. |
| Answer off a superseded sheet | That's Rev B. Rev C came in Jun 14 and moved the offset 14 inches. Here's C. |
| Document uploaded, not read yet | Got it. It'll be readable tonight. |
| Read visually, not from text | That one's a photo of a print. I read it by looking at it — check me against the sheet before you cut anything. |
| No sheet number printed on it | No sheet number on this one. Filed under the folder it came in on. |
| Nothing found in the job's documents | Nothing about that in this job's documents. |
| Asked about something outside the job | I only read this job's documents. That isn't one of them. |
| Asked to approve or stamp | I can't approve that and I can't stamp anything. Here's what the sheet says. |
| Question it couldn't make sense of | I'm not sure which side you mean — north or east? |
| Document tree, folder with nothing in it | Nothing filed here yet. |
Invented sheet numbers and invented dates. A question that gets asked back is not a failure — it is the alternative to a number nobody printed.
Ask it in the language you think in
The question can be in English, Spanish or Russian, badly punctuated, one-handed, at nine in the morning. The answer comes back in the language it was asked in.
The line off the sheet does not get translated. It is printed exactly as it appears on the drawing, in the language the drawing is in, right under the answer — so what's on the phone matches what's on the wall, character for character, and two men holding two different phones are looking at the same words.
M-402 · Rev C · Sheet note 4
“NORTH BRANCH 24x12. REDUCE TO 18x12 AFTER THIRD TAKEOFF.”
The sentence above the rule follows the man. The line under it never moves.
What it won't do
It doesn't approve anything and it doesn't stamp anything. Not a submittal, not a change, not a detail.
It doesn't answer RFIs, and it doesn't write them. That is somebody's job and the somebody is a person.
It doesn't read your contract, price a change order, or tell the office what a clause means. Different work, different product, and pretending otherwise would be the fastest way to be wrong about money.
It doesn't check the drawings against code. No plan check, no clash detection, no takeoff, no as-builts, no markup tools. If a set needs a coordination review, that is a real job for a product built to do it.
It doesn't answer about a document it hasn't read, and it names the document rather than saying something vague about not having enough information.
It doesn't touch anything outside this job's documents. No files on a machine, no code, no keys, nobody's folders.
The full list, for the whole product, is one page. → What it won't do
What it takes off the day
- The call to the PM that gets returned at four. The question was asked at nine. Six hours of a man building to his best guess, or six hours of a man waiting.
- The trip down. Off the lift, across the floor, out to the truck, find the set, find the sheet, walk back. Twice a day, for a number.
- The set in the truck cab that's two revisions old — and the four men, the day, the material and the crane it costs when nobody notices.
- The forty minutes between a question and its answer, which is the real number, and which nobody has ever put on a timesheet.
And the foreman stops being the answer desk for questions the paper could have answered.
Whose name is on the sheet
Every page of a plan set carries a seal, a signature and a date, because a licensed person is answerable for what's drawn on it. Nothing here changes that, and nothing here is engineering judgment. It reads what the sheet says, quotes it, and opens the sheet so you can read it yourself. The person whose stamp is on the drawing is still the person whose stamp is on the drawing.
Washington requires that final documents carry the seal, signature and date of the licensee who prepared them or directly supervised the work, and that every page of a plan set carry it — WAC 196-23-020. “Practice of engineering” is defined in RCW 18.43.020 as professional service requiring engineering education, training and experience, including design and supervision of construction. This is a reading tool. It is not that, it does not claim to be that, and it will not answer as though it were.
See it work.
Everything on this page depends on which sheets have actually been read — so that list is published, by name, including the ones it hasn't. → What it's read
The rest of the limits, in one place, unhedged. → What it won't do