Tutorial: 5 cool VIKTOR apps for geotechnical workflows with BoreDM

by Alejandro Duarte Vendries

Geotechnical teams collect boreholes, SPTs, CPTs, groundwater records, samples, and lab results, but this data is often hard to reuse across reports, checks, and decisions. BoreDM gives this data a platform, and VIKTOR lets you create bespoke apps that use this data. In this tutorial, we will use BoreDM and VIKTOR to create, scale, and verify secure geotechnical workflows with maps, lithology views, SPT plots, parameter estimates, and an AI project agent.

The VIKTOR AI platform lets engineering teams build, share, and govern engineering automation apps. You can create these apps with prompting, connect them easily to software you already use, like BoreDM or PLAXIS, and publish them to the rest of your organisation through a centralised app store. Every app runs through a governed pipeline: thoroughly tested and accessible to the right people. That means that the app you build today can be shared, and reused by others on their projects.

To make this practical, you will run five prompts in the App Builder and build the workflow step by step. The goal is to turn BoreDM data into VIKTOR apps that help teams review information faster, automate repeated work, and keep the process easier to share and verify.

After running the prompts, you will have five VIKTOR apps that allow you and your team to:

Visualize BoreDM projects on a map with project status, responsible person, and description.
Connect a BoreDM API key to VIKTOR in a secure way.
Visualize lithology and groundwater data from a selected project.
Read SPT data and plot N-values against depth.
Estimate geotechnical parameters from SPT values.
Create an AI agent that can answer questions about a BoreDM project.

Visualize your BoreDM project on a map

To start, you will run a prompt to create a VIKTOR app that visualizes your BoreDM projects on a map. This gives the team a quick way to see project location, status, and ownership before moving into the technical data.

Before running the first prompt, make sure you have a BoreDM API key. You can follow the steps here: Getting a BoreDM API key. Once you have it, run the following prompt in the App Builder. After the prompt creates the app, we will set the API key in the app.

Once you have the key, send this prompt to the App Builder to create the first app:

Build this app

Integrate VIKTOR and BoreDM

When the App Builder finishes creating the app, add the BoreDM API key in the app settings. Store it as BOREDM_API_KEY. This is quite easy, and you can check the setup here: Environment variables and secrets. In the video below, you will also see how to set this up.

Visualize BoreDM lithology

The second app focuses on BoreDM lithology. It helps engineers review soil layers faster, compare boreholes, and reduce manual log checking by turning borelog data into a clear visual workflow.

Use the prompt box below to create the lithology app:

Build this app

Integrate VIKTOR and BoreDM

Plot BoreDM SPT N-values for faster soil review

The next app focuses on BoreDM SPT records. It plots N-values with depth so the team can review the same data in one place, compare borelogs faster, and reuse the results in automatic reports or parameter estimation later.

Run this prompt in the App Builder:

Build this app

Integrate VIKTOR and BoreDM

Estimate geotechnical parameters from BoreDM SPT data

After reviewing SPT records, you can use the same type of BoreDM data to create a parameter estimation app. This helps teams save time on repeated calculations, review assumptions more clearly, and reuse preliminary values in design checks or reports.

Send this prompt to the App Builder:

Build this app

Integrate VIKTOR and BoreDM

Create a BoreDM geotechnical app in VIKTOR that reads borelogs and SPT N-values, applies SPT corrections, and estimates preliminary geotechnical parameters by depth.

The app should:
- Read the BoreDM API key from BOREDM_API_KEY.
- Let the user select a BoreDM project and borelog.
- Retrieve lithology, groundwater, and SPT sample data for the selected borelog.
- Apply SPT corrections using N60 = Nmeas * CE * CB * CS * CR.
- Apply overburden correction using (N1)60 = CN * N60.
- Allow the user to define correction factors and manual assumptions.
- Estimate phi' for sands using selected published correlations.
- Estimate cu or Su for clays using selected published correlations.
- Estimate Es using selected published correlations by soil type.
- Show borelog layers, groundwater table, corrected SPT table, assumptions, selected methods, and plots versus depth for N, N60, (N1)60, phi', cu or Su, and Es.
- Clearly mark the results as preliminary engineering estimates that require review.

To organize the code, create a separate file for the BoreDM API methods and keep the engineering correlations in a separate calculation file.

I will set the API key in the app secret as BOREDM_API_KEY.

Create a BoreDM project AI agent

Now that the app can visualize and calculate project data, you can run another prompt to create a BoreDM project AI agent. This helps new team members understand the project faster and lets engineers ask questions about verified data instead of searching through logs manually.

Run the following prompt to create the agent:

Build this app

Integrate VIKTOR and BoreDM

Conclusion

And that's it. With these prompts, you can start from a simple BoreDM project map and build toward reusable geotechnical apps in VIKTOR. The same workflow can help your team reduce manual work, standardize repeated checks, and add AI in a controlled way around verified project data. To get started with BoreDM, visit BoreDM. If you want to give this workflow to your team with VIKTOR, book a demo here.