New York-based assembly work instructions software startup Dirac Inc. launched today with the beta release of its first product, BuildOS.

Pitched as bringing work instructions into the 21st century, BuildOS has been designed to address the issue wherein assembly work instructions take weeks or months of manual, mind-numbing effort. Dirac argues that figuring out what order to assemble various parts, taking hundreds of screenshots of computer-aided design files and manually typing up each step-by-step direction are the dread of all mechanical and manufacturing engineers. That’s where BuildOS steps in.

BuildOS calculates what order to do all of the assembly of a mechanical system, produces 3D renderings and animations of each step and generates the text for each instruction — all automatically. In doing so, the service is claimed to take the process of drafting work instructions from weeks to minutes.

The new operating system has also been designed on an 80/20 basis, with BuildOS automating 80% of the traditional work required to be untaken by mechanical and manufacturing engineers. The remaining 20% though not automated, allows users to fill in gaps as well as reorder, annotate and manipulate the generated content as they see fit.

BuildOS users can generate and view assembly work instructions in several flexible formats, from viewing and crafting on a laptop or iPhone to generating and outputting paper instructions. BuildOS is said to be a “power tool for manufacturing engineers, not a replacement.”

“We’re building something that improves their quality of life, that automates away the grunt work that hundreds of thousands of people dread doing every day at work,” Peter Weiss (pictured, left), co-founder and chief technology officer, and Fil Aronshtein (right), co-founder and chief executive of Dirac, said in a blog post. “We’re automating work instructions so production teams can get back to doing what they love: building great things.”

Images: Dirac