A web drawing tool that lets refrigeration plant teams draw, document and analyse their plant layouts without CAD. It started life as Cedar and shipped as CORE.
Plant layouts lived in CAD files and emailed PDFs. I designed a tool where every machine on the drawing carries its own data, so the drawing becomes the plant's record.
Refrigeration plants are drawn in expensive CAD software, by engineers, and shared as static PDFs. Plant managers can't edit them, feedback arrives as notes on printouts, and numbers like compressor capacity live in separate spreadsheets.
Neosilica brought us the project for Cold Core, a refrigeration company. Stakeholders wanted drag-and-drop drawing without CAD skills, a library of real engineering objects, exports for decision-makers, and data that could feed load analysis.
There were no direct competitors to copy. Plants were being explained with general tools like diagrams.net, and the client sat between us and the end users, which made the requirements hard to pin down at first.
How might welet a plant manager draw a layout that's accurate enough for engineers, and useful enough to run the plant on?
At first I was asked to start wireframing without a brief. I wasn't getting answers through the middleman, so I contacted the end client directly and asked for stakeholder meetings. I couldn't interview end users, so stakeholder interviews, the existing tools and the drawings themselves became my research.
Plant manager
I need to see where cost and downtime are hiding.
Runs day-to-day operations. Wants layouts he can read, and presentation-ready exports.
Manufacturing engineer
The drawing has to be technically right.
Places machines and pipes precisely, connects them, and fills in equipment data.
Plant administrator
Who changed this drawing, and when?
Manages customers, locations, users, versions and compliance documents.
Only engineers could change a layout, so every small change waited on them.
Pressures, temperatures and capacities sat in spreadsheets, separate from the drawing.
Reviews happened on emailed PDFs, which led to version mix-ups.
Engineers work on the plant floor, where the network drops. The tool had to keep working offline.
AutoCAD and Plant 3D are powerful but steep and expensive. SketchUp, Lucidchart, diagrams.net, yEd and SmartDraw are easy but know nothing about engineering. CORE's space was in between: diagram-tool ease, with engineering objects that hold real data.
I mapped the core flow first: customer, then location, then system, then drawing. I sorted every canvas tool into left, top and right menus, and wireframed with the team in short sprints. Load analysis (LAD) and scope of work (SOW) came later, in phases.
Why: once objects carry their data, one drawing can feed load analysis and scope of work, instead of being redrawn for each. Plain shapes stayed in the library for annotations.
A working version of the tool, coded from the final light-theme design and following the v2.4 user guide step by step. Follow the red pulse, or jump between steps on the right. Drag objects onto the canvas, fill a data form, then turn the drawing into a load analysis and an MEB report.
One brand and one theme throughout: CORE, light, as it shipped. Customer names and values are samples.
Customers, locations and systems, a dashboard of drawings, locks while someone else edits, and an explorer for every file.
The canvas, data forms on every object, temperature settings, and load analysis generated from the drawing.
Three selects at the top of the dashboard mirror how the business is organised, so every drawing has one obvious home.
Both panels collapse to give the drawing room, with a minimap for large plants.
Mandatory fields are validated before saving, and values preview right on the canvas.
A drawing being edited is locked for others, who can still view it. Every change is logged against a version.
Edit one drawing offline with a clear state, then auto-sync when the connection is back.
Pick drawings, adjust values in one table, and generate the LAD, then an MEB report.
modules in the v2.4 user guide, from login to offline mode
kinds of document from one drawing: engineering, load analysis and MEB
themes, dark first and light after the CORE rebrand
The tool was built and documented in a 46-page user guide for version 2.4. When Cold Core took the product over from Neosilica, it was renamed CORE and the home screen was split by system type: refrigeration, electrical, hydronics, fuel, air and building health. Cost analytics were scoped out of this phase.
Go around the blocker. Contacting the client directly turned a vague brief into real goals. I'd do it sooner next time.
Learn the domain properly. Load analysis and refrigeration terms took me time. A short session with an engineer at the start would have saved rework.
Build themes on variables. We designed dark only, then rebuilt light by hand. With variables, that would have been one switch.