New: AI Drawing Comparison — Stop Squinting at Overlays

Every drawing tool that compares revisions answers the same question: where did the pixels change? Red highlights, green highlights, a percentage score. Useful — and then the real work starts, because a red blob doesn't tell you whether the electrical engineer moved a receptacle or derated your main breaker.

As of today, ArchiveView's document comparison answers the question you actually have: what changed, and does it matter?

How it works

Open any two versions in the comparison viewer — you still get the instant, client-side visual diff (side-by-side, overlay, or differences-only). Now click ✨ AI Analysis. Claude AI reads both versions the way a reviewer would and returns, in under a minute:

• A plain-English summary — "The new version adds red markup annotations across all four one-line diagrams; no underlying design changes" — plus an overall change level from none to major
• A finding for every real change, each with:
  • a severity — critical (safety/code/capacity impact), major (affects other trades or dimensions), minor (labels and annotations), or info (title-block housekeeping)
  • a category — structural, dimensional, MEP routing, annotations, grid lines, revision clouds, and more
  • a description that quotes the drawing — "400 A MCB annotated with note: change to 300 A" — and where it sits on the sheet
• Click any finding to jump to that page in the visual diff and see it yourself

Results are saved with the comparison, so reopening it is instant — the AI only re-reads when a file actually changes.

Severity is the point

A revision that touches thirty sheets usually contains two changes that matter and twenty-eight sheet-number bumps. Triage is the expensive part of drawing review, and it's exactly what severity ratings automate: filter your attention to critical and major, skim the rest. The breaker derate and the title-block date no longer look identical.

"Doesn't Bluebeam do this?"

Bluebeam's Smart Overlay (part of their new top-tier Max subscription) is genuinely good at the visual half — automated overlays, per-sheet change scores, no manual alignment. But it shows you where drawings changed, not what changed; reading the red-and-green and writing up the changes is still your job.

ArchiveView does both halves — pixel-precise visual diff and written change analysis — and it isn't a premium add-on. Like all our AI features, it's included flat-rate on every plan with AI Vision, alongside AI submittal review, spec-to-log generation, RFI drafting, and document Q&A.

Where you'll use it first

• Addendum review during bidding — what did the architect actually change in Addendum 3?
• Shop drawing resubmittals — did they fix the thing you rejected, and did anything else move?
• Owner-side change verification — confirm the as-built matches the approved revision
• Handoffs — a new PM can read the change history instead of reconstructing it

Open any two revisions in ArchiveView and click ✨ AI Analysis — it's live now. New here? Start a free trial or see the comparison viewer in action.