Innovation · Lime
Seokui Hong, a Senior Associate at Lime, kept asking the same question whenever repetitive work came up in structural design. That question led to side-by-side tests with AI, and then to automation tools and plug-ins. Here is how it happened.
In Seokui Hong's own words.
"Even with a familiar method, I ask whether there is a better way. To me, good engineering means finding a more efficient method without giving up accuracy."
I'm an improver. Accuracy is my baseline, and from there I look for a better way. Right now I'm in charge of the structural design of railway facilities for the Gadeokdo New Airport project.
Giving the same task to AI
Whenever I ran into repetitive tasks in structural design, I'd think, "Do I really have to do this every single time?" As AI got better, I started handing it the same work I was doing and comparing its results with mine.
The more I did that, the more I noticed things that could be automated or done more efficiently. Some of them were tasks I had always assumed had to be done by hand.
Time saved goes into design judgement
My thinking was simple. If engineers spend less time on repetitive work, they have more time for the parts that require real expertise: structural analysis, reviewing results, and making design decisions. That means more time can be spent improving the quality of the design itself. So I started reducing repetitive work in my own projects, one task at a time. The ideas that came out of that process eventually became automation tools and plug-ins for MIDAS GEN NX.
I now use these tools in real structural design projects. There is far less repetitive checking and data entry, and productivity has improved significantly. But the biggest change is how I spend my time. Hours that once went into routine tasks can now be spent reviewing results and making better design decisions.
Q. You mentioned a moment when the program you use every day started to look different.
It was when I started turning ideas from my day-to-day work into GEN NX plug-ins myself. I'd only ever been a user of the program. Building a function I needed and watching it work for the first time felt like a real achievement.
I first met MIDAS while studying structural engineering, and I've spent more time with it than with any other analysis and design tool since. At first I focused on learning the features it already had. With more experience, I started asking, "Couldn't this be done more efficiently?" and "Wouldn't a feature like this help?" Over time, MIDAS stopped being just a program for running analysis. It became a place where I can try out and build new ways of working.
Seokui Hong asked a simple question about repetitive work, and the answer became a plug-in. The time it saves on data entry now goes into reviewing results and making design decisions. Think about the tasks you repeat by hand every day. Which of them deserve the question, “Do I really have to do this every time?”