What an assistant is actually good at
Electrical design is a chain of small transformations between representations: geometry to circuit list, circuit list to schedule, schedule to bill of materials. Most of that chain is mechanical, and mechanical work is where language and vision models earn their keep.
Reading the input. Extracting rooms, approximate areas, wall runs and existing device locations from a PDF plan or a photograph. Not perfectly, but fast enough that correcting the output beats drawing from zero.
Naming and structuring. Proposing circuit names, grouping points into circuits by room and function, drafting a legend, writing the panel schedule header. This is convention-following work, and it is where the assistant saves the most minutes per project.
Drafting text around the design. Specifications, drawing notes, a description of assumptions, a client-facing summary of what changed between revisions.
Explaining findings. Turning "rule 27 failed on circuit L3" into a sentence a junior engineer or a client can act on.
Answering "where is this defined?" Pointing at the likely article or clause — a search shortcut, not an authority. Always open the source.
Where it breaks
The failures are consistent enough to name.
Confident invention of clause numbers. A model that has read thousands of forum posts will produce "NEC 210.8(A)(11)" with total confidence whether or not that subdivision exists in your edition. Treat every citation as a lead.
Unit and dimension confusion. mm² versus AWG, kVA versus kW, 230 V versus 400 V three-phase. The arithmetic can be internally consistent and wrong by a factor of √3.
Silent omission. If a room is not detected on the plan, the assistant does not warn you. It produces a complete-looking design with a hole in it — the hardest failure to see and the most expensive.
No site context. Ambient temperature, installation method, grouping, cable length along the actual route, derating through insulation — these come from the site and from your decisions, not from the drawing.
No accountability. A model cannot be in responsible charge of a design, cannot stamp a drawing, and cannot be cross-examined at a handover. That responsibility stays with a person and a firm.
Capability table
| Task | What the assistant does | What you must verify |
|---|---|---|
| Plan import | Detects walls, rooms, doors, scale hints | Scale calibration, missed rooms, skewed scans |
| Device placement | Suggests socket and luminaire positions | Wet zones, heights, furniture, client brief |
| Circuit grouping | Proposes circuits by room and load type | Load balance, dedicated circuits, code requirements |
| Panel schedule | Fills columns, totals, spare ways | Breaker ratings against cable ampacity |
| Single-line diagram | Drafts topology from the circuit list | Protection coordination, selectivity, ratings |
| Load calculation | Assembles the load list and totals | Method, demand factors, nameplate accuracy |
| Text and specs | Writes notes, legends, assumptions | Clause numbers, edition, project-specific wording |
| Design review | Flags apparent contradictions | Whether the rule applies at all, and the correct remedy |
The right column is not accidental. Every row needs a human decision that depends on context the model does not have. The assistant compresses the mechanical work; attention goes to what decides whether the installation is safe.
Deterministic rules versus generated text
The single most useful distinction when evaluating any tool: is the check a rule, or is it a sentence?
A rule is a condition over structured data — "breaker rating ≤ conductor ampacity", "RCD present on circuits serving wet areas", "voltage drop on the longest run ≤ limit". It either holds or it does not, and it produces the same answer every time. This is ordinary software, and it is trustworthy in the same way a spreadsheet formula is trustworthy.
Generated text is a language model producing prose. It can explain a rule, summarise a report, or draft a note. It should never be the thing that decides whether a rule passed.
Tools that blur the two — where a model "reviews" a drawing and reports violations in free text — are the ones to distrust. Ask a vendor directly: which checks are deterministic, and can I see the rule that fired? If the answer is "the AI understands the code", that is a marketing answer.
GorkyCAD's design check runs a fixed set of 41 rules over the project model and reports each finding with the object it applies to; the AI layer sits on top and explains findings and parses inputs. The rules do not improvise. You can see the split in the demo, which is the fastest way to judge whether the explanations are useful or noise.
A review workflow that keeps you responsible
The workflow that works is boring and short.
- Assistant drafts, engineer decides. Every generated element is a proposal until a person accepts it.
- Check the inputs before the output. Rooms detected, scale correct, nameplates known. Most downstream errors are upstream data errors.
- Run deterministic checks first. Rules catch the mechanical mistakes — breaker versus cable, missing protection, panel overfill.
- Read the AI text last, and read it sceptically. It is documentation, not verification.
- Record what was overridden. A short note on rejected suggestions is worth more than it costs when the design is reviewed six months later.
- Sign as a human. The deliverable carries a person's name, not a model's.
This is not slower than working without an assistant. It is slower than trusting one, which is the only honest comparison.
How to evaluate an AI electrical tool
Five questions that separate a useful tool from a demo:
- Does it show its source data? If you cannot see which room or circuit a suggestion came from, you cannot audit it.
- Are the rules deterministic and listed? Ask for the rule set, not a video.
- What happens on a bad scan? A tool that silently produces a clean-looking design from an unreadable plan is dangerous.
- Can you correct it cheaply? Editing a suggested circuit should take seconds.
- Does it export a reviewable package? PDF, DXF, schedules and a calculation summary another engineer can check.
If a vendor answers all five with evidence, the product is probably real. If any answer is "our AI handles that", keep your existing workflow.
What "AI-designed" must never mean
Three claims to refuse, as a buyer or as a practitioner:
"The AI produces a permit-ready design without an engineer." Design responsibility is a professional and legal matter, decided by jurisdiction and by who signs. No tool changes that.
"Certified to NEC/IEC." Standards bodies certify products and persons, not workflows. A vendor may say the software supports checks based on a standard; that is a different sentence, and you should insist on the difference.
"The AI guarantees compliance." Compliance depends on the actual installation, the actual equipment, local amendments, and the inspector's reading. Software can reduce the chance of a mistake; it cannot underwrite one.
The practical position: an assistant is a productivity tool with a real error rate. Use it where errors are cheap to catch — drafting, naming, structuring, summarising — and keep human review where errors are expensive.
Where this leaves you
If you design a handful of installations a month and most of your time goes into transcription between documents, an assistant pays for itself quickly. If your work is unusual — heavy industry, hazardous areas, complex coordination studies — the assistant will spend more time being corrected than it saves.
The honest middle ground is a browser tool that keeps the plan, the circuits, the single-line diagram and the checks in one model, with AI doing the reading and the writing. Try it on a project you already know the answer to — that is the only benchmark that matters. The live demo runs without installation; pricing and the documentation explain what the free tier includes. For the wider tool landscape, see the electrical CAD software guide.
Sources
- NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers — responsible charge and competence: nspe.org
- NFPA 70, National Electrical Code: nfpa.org/70
- IEC 60364 series, Low-voltage electrical installations: IEC Webstore
- NIST AI Risk Management Framework (documentation and human oversight): nist.gov
This article describes tooling, not professional advice. Verify every requirement against the edition enforced in your jurisdiction.
No. It can draft, structure and check. Responsibility for the design, the calculations and the signed deliverable remains with a qualified person and their firm, as required by the jurisdiction.
Better than it was, and still imperfect. Clean vector PDFs work well; skewed scans, handwriting and overlapping layers degrade quickly. Always review detected rooms and the scale before trusting anything downstream.
Sometimes, if the violation is formal and expressible as a rule — breaker versus cable ampacity, missing RCD on a wet-area circuit. It will not catch a judgement call, an unusual installation method, or something absent from the model entirely.
Not accurate enough to cite. Models reproduce plausible-looking numbering. Use the answer as a search hint, then open the standard itself. Never put a clause number in a deliverable without checking it.
It does not transfer it. If you sign the design, you own the design, regardless of which tool drafted it. Document your review, keep the calculation trail, and treat generated text as you would a junior colleague's first draft.
Design it in the browser
Turn the plan into circuits, a panel schedule, a single-line diagram and a calculated bill of materials. Start free or open the demo.
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