Surveyor Web App

Redrawn, twice

Surveyors documented measurements on paper on-site, redrew everything by hand later at home, and handed that off to a separate team just to convert it into AutoCAD. Time-consuming, error-prone, and repetitive in a way that added a full extra pass to work already done correctly once in the field.

The environment was part of the problem, not just the workflow. Direct sunlight makes most screens hard to read. Gloves make small touch targets unreliable. Time pressure on-site leaves no room for a tool that needs explaining.

Capture, don't rebuild CAD

The instinct might be to build a lighter version of AutoCAD for the browser. I didn't. The actual insight was that site data itself could generate a DXF file directly, removing the redraw step entirely. The tool only needed to capture the right data in the field, not replace the CAD software downstream.

Direction, not free draw

Free-form drawing on a small touchscreen, outdoors, under time pressure, is where errors happen. I restricted input to direction-based plotting, north, south, east, west, with a 90-degree plot logic matching how surveying measurements actually work. Narrower than a general drawing canvas, and that narrowness is what makes it usable in the conditions it's actually used in.

Calculator, not canvas

I rejected a richer, more conventional interface with more controls and more visual detail. Daylight visibility and glove-friendly targets mattered more than a comprehensive toolset here. Large, high-contrast inputs closer to a calculator than a design tool, a real constraint rather than a stripped-down compromise, since the fuller version would be functionally unusable outdoors.

What shipped

The tool shipped and is actively used in real surveying workflows, tested with multiple users along the way. Redraw effort dropped, since field data now generates the AutoCAD file directly instead of a second team recreating it.

What I took from it