SYSTRA Engineer Automates Structural Design Force Comparison with AI

In structural design, comparing different design iterations is a daily task, but it’s often still done manually. Engineers export results, build Excel tables, and spend hours to see and present what changed between versions. Using AI in VIKTOR, Vishva Prakash Sahu (structural engineer at SYSTRA) automated this process. He built an application that reduces design force comparisons from hours to just minutes, while making the results easier to interpret and share.

About Systra

SYSTRA is a global engineering and consulting group specializing in transport infrastructure, including rail, bridges, and urban mobility systems. Their engineers work on complex, large-scale projects where designs evolve continuously, making fast and reliable comparison of design iterations essential.

Manual design force comparison

As a structural engineer specialized in bridge design, Vishva frequently works with analysis tools like MIDAS Civil. These tools generate detailed results for different load cases and design assumptions, but comparing those results across versions is not straightforward.

Each design iteration results in a new model. To understand what changed, engineers typically export results to Excel, build comparison tables, and manually assess differences. This process can take hours per comparison, and lacks visual clarity, making it harder to interpret results or communicate them to stakeholders.

Instant comparison and visualization

Vishva used the VIKTOR App Builder to build an application that automates design force comparison using AI. Without a strong coding background, he started building the app using prompts, translating his engineering logic directly into an application. Within a short time, he developed a Structural Force Visualizer.

Structural Force Visualizer.jpg

I only had to tell what I wanted, and it started building it. With just a few prompts, I already had a working workflow.

Vishva Prakash Sahu

Structural Engineer at SYSTRA

With the app, engineers can:

Upload analysis results directly from Excel
Visualize structural force diagrams in an interactive 3D environment
Overlay two versions design forces in a single view
Instantly see differences per element, including exact percentage changes

Instead of working through static tables, engineers can now explore results visually, making it much easier to understand what changed and why. What used to take hours of manual work—building tables, comparing values, interpreting results, can now be done in minutes.

Try the app yourself!

From bridge design to other engineering workflows

While the app was built for bridge design, the underlying approach is much broader.

The same workflow (uploading data, visualizing results, comparing versions) can be applied across different engineering tools and disciplines. Vishva’s next step is to make the app more generic, so it can handle inputs from multiple software tools.