How to Generate a Panel List with AUAR If You Know Nothing About Construction

As someone who knows nothing about construction, I tried AUAR's AI software platform. It's made by Automated Architecture, an AI software for real house construction, and the core is turning a house's dimensions automatically into panel designs, production schedules, and on-site construction plans. In plain language: you tell it what the house looks like, and it tells you how many panels the factory should cut, how big, and in what order to assemble them.

I'm not from a construction background; the client has a small factory doing panel-type structures, and I spent the past two weeks running a minimal project on it. Below is the whole process from zero to output.

1. First, lock down the units and what you're building

Step one, create a project. After logging in, the left side is the project list; click New Project, and it asks you to fill in three things: project name, units, structure type.

The units field is critical. The default is millimeters; I didn't notice the first time, and entered a wall length as 4.5, so the system calculated it as 4.5 millimeters, and the whole house came out the size of a palm. It won't throw an error—it'll just keep calculating based on the number you gave it.

For structure type, choose panel. AUAR's whole approach is breaking walls, floors, and roofs into standard panels—what it's good at is prefab assembly buildings. If you want to build a curved freeform roof, this tool isn't for you.

After filling it in, click Create to enter the workspace. The interface has three parts: left is the floor and component tree, middle is the 3D view, right is the parameter panel.

2. Enter the dimensions and let it generate panels

1. In the left component tree, click Add Floor to add a floor first; I entered the floor height as 2.7 meters.

2. Select this floor, and draw the exterior wall outline in the middle view. On my end I can enter coordinate points or drag. For beginners, I suggest entering coordinates—dragging easily misaligns.

3. After drawing the exterior walls, right-click and select Generate Panels. This step is the core—it cuts each wall into panels according to your set maximum panel width, auto-numbering them, e.g. W01-03 means the third wall panel on the first floor.

4. Wait about one or two minutes, and the middle view turns into an assembly diagram with gaps, each panel having its own color and number.

5. Switch the right panel to the Production page—this is the scheduling. It gives a table: panel number, dimensions, quantity, opening positions.

6. Finally click Export to get a panel list plus an assembly sequence diagram. On-site workers use this diagram to install by number.

For the whole process, on my end from creating the project to getting the list took about forty minutes, with two rounds of dimension changes in between.

3. Pros and cons list, and where beginners most easily stumble

First the pitfalls. The units issue is one. The second is wall thickness—I forgot to change the default value in the parameter panel, so the panel thickness didn't match what was actually purchased, and the whole list was voided and had to be redone. The third is openings—door and window holes need to be marked on the wall before generating panels; if the order is reversed, the openings won't automatically land on the panels and have to be added manually.

The main advantage is saving manual work. The panel list doesn't need to be laid out by hand—previously this kind of work was done cell by cell in Excel; now change one dimension and the whole table recalculates. Scheduling and construction instructions are bound together—outputting the list also gives the assembly sequence, two things that in a traditional process are done by two people. The numbering system is also clear—install by number on site, less rework.

The disadvantages are also obvious. It demands regular input—if you give it wrong numbers it won't stop you, it'll just silently calculate wrong, and catching errors is all on you to review. It's only suitable for standardized panel structures; irregular shapes, large spans, and cast-in-place—it doesn't handle those. The results still need a human to go over; it can't do a structural engineer's job—what it can cut is only repetitive labor.

After getting a single story working, for the next step I suggest trying two things: add a second floor to see how the floor slabs align with the wall panels—this is where panel structures most easily go wrong; then change a parameter once and regenerate the list, to feel how much work "change one spot, recalculate the whole table" actually saves—more intuitive than reading any introduction.

A while back I was flipping through AEC's financing weekly, and money in construction tech keeps flowing in, with single rounds reaching over forty million USD, but not many tools actually land on the construction site—most stop at the design and quantity-takeoff stage. AUAR counts as having taken one more step toward the construction side.