"When you're laying out walls in repetition, human error is adding up. Dusty removes that error." — J.R. Roy, BIM Coordinator, Daley's Drywall
"My bid hit rate is 100%, and Dusty plays a major role in that success." — Josh Lewis, COO, FrameTec
"It's turned into, 'I need Dusty out here because I can't get the job done in time without it.'" — Tim Bauer, Manager of Construction Innovation, Bouma Corporation
"It used to take us 12-16 hours to manually lay out the plans [...] for just the framing layout. Using Dusty, it takes 6-8 labor hours and we lay out every trade at once. With Dusty we can do double the work, more accurately than traditional layout."
"We laid them out [modular MEP panels] with Dusty, built them at their site, they completed all the rough-in, and then we brought them on site. They fit perfectly."
A total station is an electronic instrument that is used in construction for measuring distances and angles for surveying and construction layout. There are two types of total stations in construction: a total station and a robotic total station. However, total stations are considered outdated tools for construction layout. Fully-automated robotic layout is the better solution that completely automates the layout process by printing the digital model directly on the construction site surface.
Automated construction layout uses a mobile robot to print the BIM model directly on the slab or deck at full scale, at 1/16-inch accuracy. On multi-family projects, the robot prints wall locations, MEP rough-in points, door tags, and finish locations across every unit and every floor, driven from the design model. The result is a printed plan on the deck that every trade builds from, with the same accuracy on unit one and unit 100.
Dusty Robotics is a self-driving automated layout robot that prints the design directly on the slab or deck at 1/16-inch accuracy. On apartment construction projects, the workflow starts in Autodesk Revit or AutoCAD; VDC teams use the Dusty plugin to push the multi-trade layout to the robot. One operator runs the robot across the floor, and the printed layout lands ready for framing, MEP rough-in, and finishes. A floor cycle that used to take a layout crew days takes hours.
Robotic layout on a multifamily project is roughly 10x faster than manual layout. Daley's Drywall compressed layout schedules by 80% and saved $300,000 in direct labor over two years using Dusty. FrameTec cut framing-only layout from 12-16 hours per house down to 6-8 hours for multi-trade layout, doing twice the scope in half the time. The savings compound across stacked units, which is where multi-family layout economics get the most leverage.
Podium and 5-over-1 projects layer wood-frame structure above a concrete transfer slab, and the layout precision on the podium deck drives everything that stacks above it. Dusty prints the multi-trade layout (framing, plumbing risers, electrical rough-in, mechanical drops, and embedded MEP/FP) directly on the podium slab before framing starts. That eliminates the field RFIs about whether plumbing chases clear the framing, and gives every wood-frame floor above the same accurate starting reference. Post-tensioned podium slabs benefit most because the cost of a misplaced embed is highest there.
Yes. The Dusty FieldPrint Platform is structure-agnostic. It prints the design on whatever deck the trades are framing into, whether that's a concrete podium under wood framing (Type V), a steel-stud light-gauge mid-rise (Type III or IV), or a Type I concrete high-rise tower. The repetition payoff scales with the build; the more units, floors, and phases, the more return on automating the layout work.
Yes. Prefab and panelized multi-family is one of the strongest fits for automated layout. Panel manufacturers already produce the digital model the robot needs. Dusty prints panel numbers, orientation marks, panel-to-panel connection details, and crew install instructions directly on the slab. Onsite pickup drops from hours to minutes per unit. The misread-panel mistakes that throw whole floors out of alignment go away because the factory and the field are working from the same set of files.
Automated layout puts one operator with a robot in place of a multi-person manual layout crew. On multi-family projects, that matters most because qualified layout hands are hard to find and harder to scale across multiple buildings on the same project. An apprentice can run the Dusty system as effectively as a 20-year journeyman, so framing crews scale across phased buildings without doubling the layout team for every structure breaking ground.
Repetition is the through-line across multi-family typologies, and that's where automated layout has the most leverage. Dusty works on:
