Clark AI Assistant

Clark is the AI assistant built into Blue Vellum. Open him with the robot button in the bottom-right corner of the drawing editor, or press Ctrl+J. The chat stays out of your way while you work -- minimize and restore it without losing the conversation.

What Clark can do

Build and modify the layout

Clark works on the same drawing you do, through the same rules the canvas enforces:

• "Create a warehouse 400 by 250 feet" -- builds the building and its column grid, or walks you through it if you leave the numbers out.
• "Draw a 100 by 80 rack area in the top left" / "make it double deep" / "move it 10 feet right" / "delete the staging area" -- create, reshape, move, clone, and delete areas, and set their storage type.
• "Rack the building" -- fills the building with an optimized rack layout, working around dock doors and obstructions. Add constraints in the same breath: "rack the building with 9 foot aisles".
• "Add four dock doors to the south wall" -- places doors with sensible spacing; dock doors bring their staging areas, egress doors their clearance zones.
• "Set the column spacing to 50 by 54" -- edits the building's column grid.

Elevations and levels

• "Create a new elevation with 4 levels"
• "Add a level to Elevation A" / "move level 3 up 6 inches" / "delete the top level"
• "Will this elevation fit under the clear height?" -- Clark checks the numbers against the building instead of guessing.

Answer questions -- and point at the screen

Clark knows the product documentation: tools, menus, elevations, exports, shortcuts, capacity behavior. Ask "how do I export a PDF?" or "what does Auto-fill do?" and he'll give you instructions.

When the answer involves a control that is currently visible, Clark can highlight it: the page dims and a ring surrounds the control ("where is the measure tool?"). Click anywhere or press Escape to dismiss the highlight. If the control lives in a closed menu or another view, he gives you directions there instead.

Look things up and generate outputs

• "Generate the bill of materials" -- the live BOM for the drawing (parts counts, not prices).
• "Find the Riverside project" / "open the customers page" -- searches your customers, projects, and drawings, and navigates the app.
• "Take a look at the drawing" -- Clark renders the current view and inspects it visually, useful for "does anything look off?" checks.

Tips

Be specific

Less effective	More effective
"Move it a bit"	"Move Zone A 50 inches left"
"Make it bigger"	"Make Receiving 20 feet wider"
"Add some rack"	"Create a 100 by 80 foot rack area along the top wall"

Use names and addresses

Reference areas by their label ("move Receiving left"), elevations by name, and bays by their column-line address ("the bay between B/C and 3/4") -- Clark reads the same grid labels you see.

Undo works normally

Clark's changes land on the same undo stack as yours. If he does something you don't want, press Ctrl+Z (or the toolbar Undo button) -- one press per change, exactly as if you had made it yourself.

What to double-check

Blue Vellum outputs are reference material, and that applies to Clark too:

• Code compliance -- fire access, egress, seismic requirements: verify with your local authority.
• Rack capacities -- confirm beam and frame loads against manufacturer tables or a professional engineer.
• Equipment fit -- aisle guidance (roughly 108 inches for counterbalanced forklifts, 96 inches for reach trucks, 60 inches for very narrow aisle turret trucks) is a starting point; confirm against your equipment vendor's specs.
• Clark has no access to your inventory or warehouse management system.

Keyboard shortcut

Press Ctrl+J to toggle Clark open and closed, from anywhere in the drawing editor.