Pulling drawings by text

The problem in one sentence

Your foreman is in a man-lift, on a roof, in a stair-tower, in a basement. He needs sheet A-301. Right now, in 30 seconds, not in 5 minutes after opening an app, logging in, navigating to drawings, searching, pinch-zooming.

What “send me A-301” actually does in Forward

1. Foreman texts send me a-301 to the project’s Forward number.
2. Forward parses the sheet number. If ambiguous (multi-level A-301, A-301A vs A-301B), Forward asks one clarifying question.
3. Forward queries Procore Drawings API (or Autodesk Sheets, or your OneDrive Drawings folder) for the current revision of sheet A-301.
4. Forward generates a thumbnail of the first page of the revision and inlines it into the iMessage reply.
5. Forward attaches the full PDF (on iMessage, full-res; on SMS fallback, a public-CDN link).
6. Forward cites the revision number, the date, and the source tool: “A-301 rev 4 (2026-04-23) — Procore.”

Total round-trip: 3-5 seconds. Foreman tap-opens the PDF in Bluebeam or Acrobat to mark up, or just reads it in the SMS thread.

What if it’s not in Procore

Forward connects to four file sources simultaneously:

• Procore Drawings tool (most common)
• Autodesk Construction Cloud Sheets (ACC Build users)
• OneDrive / SharePoint library (if you keep your drawings there)
• Project-scoped folder uploaded through the Forward dashboard

When the foreman texts a sheet number, Forward checks each source in priority order. First match wins. If the drawings live in two places, Forward flags the version mismatch and cites both.

The revision-history story

Pulling the wrong revision of a sheet is the most expensive kind of communication failure on a commercial project. Forward always returns the most-current revision unless the field user explicitly asks for an older one (send me a-301 rev 2).

Forward also pushes a passive notification: if the current revision is less than 24 hours old, the reply includes a “new this morning” flag so the foreman knows the sheet just changed.

Drawings the foreman doesn’t know the number of

Half the drawing requests in the field aren’t by sheet number — they’re by what’s on the sheet. Forward handles those:

• which sheet shows the south stair detail → Forward returns the candidate sheets ranked by relevance, shows the first one inline.
• pull the panel schedule for level 3 east → Forward locates the electrical schedule sheet for that location.
• show me the riser diagram for the east tower → matches against drawing names + descriptions.

Trades who can’t access Procore

The drawings live in the GC’s Procore account. Your electrical sub’s foreman doesn’t have a Procore login. He’s working off the PDF set the GC emailed him three weeks ago that is now two revisions stale.

Forward’s SMS interface is the bridge. Once the GC authorizes Forward against the project (single OAuth click), the sub’s foreman just texts a number. The current revision flows to him without anyone giving him Procore access.

Multi-line tenants and project routing

Operating on multiple projects? Each project gets a dedicated Forward phone number (or shares a number with smart project disambiguation). Foreman’s phone has “Forward - Tower A”, “Forward - Marina Project” in the contact list. He texts the right one, gets the right project’s drawing.

Try it from your phone

Text +1 (682) 300-6750 with send me a-301. Demo project returns an actual sheet thumbnail in iMessage in under 5 seconds.