Dusty Robotics

08/31/2026

Dusty’s a layout robot. It belongs on the slab. But when you get the chance to jump on the main stage at DCAC in Austin... you do it! Lasers, fog machines, and a floor that’s never seen a chalk line. But we weren’t printing layout. Dusty proved its accuracy by printing pics of DCAC speakers and attendees. Where should we take Dusty next?

08/19/2026

At first, the field blamed the robot.

But here's what really happened: The CAD files were out of date — and by using Dusty to lay out the coordinated model to a sixteenth of an inch, T**a 3D had just helped avoid disaster on a hyperscale data center. Stale files, survey drift, even rotational errors show up right on the floor, in front of everyone, before anybody builds a problem into the project.

"Dusty forces people to see the problem," says Paul Tice, CEO of T**a 3D. "It makes it technicolor."

Full story: https://www.dustyrobotics.com/customers/topa-3d

08/17/2026

BuiltWorlds' 2026 Robotics 50 is out, and yes, Dusty made the list. 350 million square feet of layout printed across thousands of jobsites — that's what operating at scale looks like.

Full list:

The 2026 BuiltWorlds Robotics Top 50 list spotlights 50 of the most innovative robotics solutions reshaping how buildings and infrastructure are designed, built, and delivered. Derived from survey data, industry research, and member feedback, this list showcases the top construction robotics solutio...

08/10/2026

Your best people shouldn't spend the day on their knees snapping chalk lines. Dusty prints the layout while the crew keeps working — so they can do things you can actually bill for.

08/07/2026

On a lot of projects, exactly one person can change the layout file. They know AutoCAD, and everybody else goes through them. Swap a linestyle, adjust point styles for one trade, and it's a round trip through VDC.

Dusty Portal takes out the round trips. Once VDC preps the layout, the entire team can review it and update linestyles, point styles, layers, and annotations directly in Portal — including the crew in the field.

Part 7 of our Multi-Trade Layout best practices series: https://www.dustyrobotics.com/blog/field-communication-starts-with-file-prep

08/06/2026

Whose fault is it when what gets built doesn't match the model? Usually nobody can say for certain. That's how a disagreement becomes an RFI, and an RFI becomes a change order.

On Robins & Morton's Huntsville Hospital Madison Street Tower project, the team printed the layout straight from the coordinated model with Dusty.

"We put so much money and work into these models, and if someone doesn't follow it exactly, there's often finger-pointing when it comes to moving items or even figuring out new routing," said Project Manager Hunter Bullock. "This brings quality to a higher level by reducing human error and providing teams with the exact intent of the design team and coordinated models."

Robins & Morton trained three interns, a project engineer, a field engineer, and a carpenter foreman to run Dusty. All of them were competent after one day.

Accountability to the model only holds if the field can run the tool themselves. If it takes a specialist, the model stays in the office.

Where does your team lose the most time to model-versus-field disagreements?

Full story on Robins & Morton’s website: https://www.robinsmorton.com/five-ways-dusty-robotics-transforms-layout-processes/

Meet Dusty, the friendly-faced layout expert who stands just inches tall. This robot prints digital model data directly onto the jobsite floor, quickly providing a multi-trade layout “map” while maintaining accuracy to 1/16 inch. This winter, the team at Robins & Morton's Huntsville Hospital Mad...

08/05/2026

Between your coordinated model and the concrete, there's a translation step: somebody reads the drawings, pulls a tape, snaps a line, and hopes they got it right.

Now imagine that risk, gone. Information goes straight from your design environment to the slab at 1/16" accuracy.

If you're not going to build to the model, why model at all?

08/04/2026

Thirty people from a dozen companies at a brewery in Reno — some running Dusty for years, some who'd never seen a layout robot. Tradespeople and builders, trading notes, sharing advice, and pushing the industry forward.

At the end of the night, the robot printed a question on the floor: where should we go next?

If you want an event like this in your community, tell us in the comments.

07/30/2026

A coordinated BIM model contains everything anybody ever needed to know about the project. That's the problem. It has all the information the field needs to build, plus a lot they don't. And the fact that Dusty CAN print anything in the model doesn't mean you SHOULD print everything.

But deciding what to print is the easy half. The harder question is making sure every piece of layout information has an owner. When three or four trades merge their scope into one combined file, nobody can point at a line and say who is responsible for it being correct.

Dusty Portal federates multiple files into one layout without flattening them. Each trade owns their file and their layers, and one trade's scope is protected from changes or errors in another's. But everybody still reviews the whole layout together.

Part 7 of our Multi-Trade Layout best practices series: https://www.dustyrobotics.com/blog/field-communication-starts-with-file-prep

04/09/2026

If you’re installing equipment in a factory that Bouma Corporation laid out, you’re connected to the design documentation on a whole different level. The information you need, like bolt torques or part numbers, are printed directly on the floor for you. And any other specs or live engineering docs are one scan of a QR code away.

That's because Bouma uses Dusty to embed QR codes in the layout that link directly to source-of-truth documentation. Scan, get the information, get back to installing.

"Think about anything that would help your installer. You want to give the most critical, highest-value information." — Tim Bauer, Manager of Construction Innovation at Bouma.

Bouma has run two dozen industrial layout projects with Dusty, from automotive suppliers, to data centers, and even rack manufacturing. Their process: the factory's engineers prep the file how they want it. "They own the content; we make sure it prints right."

Geometry gets the crew to the right spot. The QR codes tell them what to do when they get there.