ASTRA Engineering — Drawing Revision Monitor
100% automated drawing revision alerts within 1 minute — 98% time saved on manual follow-up that used to take 4+ hours per day. A small engineering firm was losing time, money, and credibility because nobody knew when a drawing had been updated.
Updates were discovered 'by accident' — and it was costing real money
Designers finished an update and dropped the new file into the shared folder. After that, nothing happened automatically. People only found out a drawing had changed when they happened to open the file. By then, others had already ordered the wrong part, fabricated the wrong component, or installed the wrong thing on site.
A small, dedicated tool that watches the drawing folder 24/7
The Drawing Revision Monitor runs on the company LAN, watches every drawing folder you point it at, and reacts to changes the moment they happen. The team never has to think about it.
Watches the LAN folder 24/7
New files, updated files, removed files, and re-saved files are all detected within seconds.
Emails the right people, instantly
Each project has its own recipient list. Instant alerts or 30-minute digests — your choice.
Full audit trail
Every change is logged with timestamp, drawing number, old revision, new revision, and recipients.
Live dashboard
Open in any browser on the LAN. See activity across all projects, all folders, in one place.
Every feature, live in production
File detection and tracking
- Watch one or more LAN folders in real time (24/7)
- Detect new, updated, removed, and re-saved files
- Catch files that don't follow the naming convention
- Multi-project support — Astra plant, Client X, Client Y
- Add or remove watched folders from the dashboard
- Sub-folder monitoring for nested project structures
Email notifications
- Instant email with the updated PDF attached
- Per-project recipient lists, configurable from the dashboard
- Instant or digest mode (30-minute summaries for burst updates)
- Email retry queue if the mail server is briefly down
- Dry-run mode for safe testing
- Email includes drawing number, old/new revision, project, timestamp
Dashboard and visibility
- Live event feed — changes appear within 3 seconds
- Current revision of every drawing in each project
- Full history view for any drawing
- Watcher health indicator (green = running, red = offline)
- Access from any browser on the LAN — no install required
- Survives server restart with no duplicate alerts
Compliance and operations
- Permanent audit log of every change
- One-click export of the audit log to Excel or CSV
- File-hash based duplicate detection
- Runs as a Windows Service — auto-starts on server boot
- Login / user accounts for sensitive operations
- Manual re-scan button from the dashboard
Before automation, staff regularly worked overtime and weekends to chase drawing updates — driving up labour cost and still missing revisions. After go-live, alerts fire automatically 24/7 with no weekend catch-up required.
| Process | Manual document control | AI-automated (SkyElevate) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time taken | Error rate | Cost | Time taken | Error rate | Cost | |
| Drawing revision alerts | 4+ hours/day chasing teams; weekends common | Wrong revision used on site weekly | Overtime pay + rework + scrap | Under 1 minute — automatic email with PDF | Near-zero — everyone gets latest rev | Weekend overtime eliminated |
| Revision discovery | Found by accident when file opened | Stale drawings in procurement/fabrication | Wrong parts ordered, site corrections | Instant detection within 3 seconds | No stale revisions in circulation | Rework costs avoided |
| Audit / compliance reporting | Hours compiling spreadsheets manually | No traceability of which rev was used | Failed audits, client penalties | One-click Excel export | Full audit trail per change | ISO-ready reporting at no extra effort |
| Document controller workload | Entire days on FYI emails per project | Missed notifications on busy weeks | Senior staff on routine admin, not control work | Upload file as normal — system handles rest | Every change logged and notified | Staff time redirected to high-value work |
How the workflow changes
- 1Designer updates the drawing on their PC.
- 2Copies the file to the LAN folder.
- 3Nothing happens. Nobody knows.
- 4Document controller eventually notices and emails a few people.
- 5Others keep working on the old version.
- 6Wrong part ordered, wrong fabrication, wrong install.
- 7Discovered days or weeks later during inspection.
- 8Rework, scrap, and delay.
- 9No record of who used which revision when.
- Designer updates the drawing on their PC.
- Copies the file to the LAN folder (no change in their workflow).
- Within seconds, the system detects the change.
- Right people get an email with the new PDF attached.
- For burst updates, a 30-minute digest summarises everything.
- Engineers open the email, save the attachment, use the latest version.
- Every change is permanently logged with timestamp and revisions.
- Manager opens the dashboard for cross-project visibility.
- End of month: one click exports a full audit log to Excel.
The result
- 100% automated drawing alerts — detection, email with PDF, and audit log with no manual chasing
- 98% time saved on document controller follow-up — updates land in inboxes within seconds; team only verifies exceptions
- 4+ hours/day reclaimed — document controller no longer sends manual FYI emails
- Weekend overtime eliminated — no more catch-up shifts chasing missed revisions
- Full audit trail — one-click Excel export for ISO and client submissions
The system turns a long-standing source of rework, scrap, and delay into a quiet, automatic process. The document controller is freed up for actual document control work. Engineers, production, and site teams always have the latest version in their inbox. The project manager has visibility across every project in one place. And when an auditor asks "which revision of drawing X was in use on date Y?", the answer is a one-click export away.
"We went from hoping people saw the latest drawing to knowing they got it. That alone has paid for the system many times over."