Ballooning a drawing should take minutes, not an afternoon
Ballooning — numbering every dimension on a drawing and listing each one in an inspection sheet — is the slowest step of inspection planning. Done by hand on an 80-dimension print, it takes the better part of an hour and one skipped dimension invalidates the whole sheet.
Asterion Report balloons the drawing for you: import the PDF, select a zone, and the dimensions come out numbered, tolerated and ready to measure.
How automatic ballooning works
You work zone by zone, not blind on the whole sheet: select a view, the AI reads it and returns the dimensions it found — nominal, tolerance, GD&T frame. Each one gets a balloon on the drawing and a numbered row in the report. Click a row and the matching balloon lights up on the print, so checking the extraction takes seconds.
Only the selected zone is sent for analysis, never the full drawing — a deliberate data-security choice.
- 93% of dimensions detected across 400+ real production drawings
- 87% perfect without any touch-up
- GD&T symbols and general tolerances (ISO 2768, ASME, DIN) handled
- An 80-dimension report: from 45 minutes down to about 7
The balloon is only the beginning
Most ballooning tools stop at the numbered drawing and an export. Here the ballooned drawing IS the live report: operators enter measurements against each balloon — on screen or in pencil on the printed sheet, transcribed by handwriting OCR — and sign per dimension. When the part comes back next month, duplicate the report for free.
Priced for job shops
Unlimited users on every plan. Free trial of 25 reports with your own drawings, no credit card. Data hosted in Montreal, Canada.