How do I connect a folder of documents to Bildstak?

Question

Accepted Answer

Point Bildstak at a folder of documents — contracts, specs, submittals, correspondence — and it indexes them with OCR and semantic search. You can then ask questions across the whole document library in plain English, with answers citing the exact document and page. Connecting a folder of documents to Bildstak takes three steps and no coding.

1. Point Bildstak at the folder — this can be a cloud storage path (SharePoint, Google Drive, S3) or a local folder if you are using the Desktop app. Bildstak supports common document types: PDFs, Word documents, scanned images, drawings and specification files.

2. Bildstak indexes the documents — an OCR and semantic indexing process runs in the background. For scanned PDFs, the text is extracted using vision-based OCR. For native PDFs, the text layer is read directly. The index captures not just keyword content but the meaning of passages, so semantic questions work even when the exact phrasing differs.

3. Ask questions across the library — once indexed, the document folder behaves like any other source in the federation. You can ask:

- "Does the specification require Type A or Type B fire stopping on Level 5?"
- "Which contracts include a variation clause that requires written instruction within 7 days?"
- "Find all references to the soil investigation report across the contract documents."

Every answer cites the source document and page. Cross-source questions that span documents and live data (P6, Procore, BIM) work too — for example, "which open RFIs reference a clause in the specification that I can find in my document library?"

Document folders are particularly useful for contracts, specifications, submittals and historic correspondence that are not held in a formal document management system.

كيف أربط مجلّد مستندات بـ Bildstak؟

Related questions