Automation for design studios
Specsheets, schedules, cost estimates, revisions, reports. If your team retypes the same data into drawings, spreadsheets and slides on every project, we automate it — with software and AI built around the tools your studio already uses.
Today: typed into
Generated, every time
Your discipline
Pick your discipline and jump straight to the examples that fit your work.
Lighting design 8 examples Light for live music, Laurenskerk 
Architecture 8 examples The Sun installation 
Interior design 6 examples Simple Sockets pendants 
Exhibitions & museums 6 examples Smart Objects with THUAS 
Landscape & urban 6 examples The Wave, Scheveningen 
Every studio 4 examples Vaib, our AI lighting designer The problem
It's rarely the design. It's everything your team has to do to the design, again and again, on every project.
A product goes into your drawing, your schedule and your presentation by hand. One change means three edits, and one of them gets missed.
Datasheets, photometric files and supplier pages, copied field by field into your own format.
Quantities and schedules live next to the drawing instead of coming out of it, so every issue starts with a recount.
Revisions have to be tracked and documents reissued without losing what the contractor received last month.
That detail, that fitting, that supplier from a project three years ago — somewhere in a dated folder.
Contractors and clients ask for the latest file, because the latest file lives in someone's inbox.
Before you build anything
Think of one task in your studio and tick what's true. Frequent, repeatable work on digital information is where software pays back fastest — and we'll tell you what we'd do about it.
Score 0 of 9
How much could you save?
Your own numbers, for one repetitive task.
What fits
A proper tool
Weeks of your team's time every year. Worth one source of truth.
Counted over 46 working weeks and 40-hour weeks. This is your estimate of your own process, not a promise; the process review replaces it with a measured number.
How often × how long
Every task in your studio sits somewhere on this grid. Wherever yours lands, there's something we can do — except the bottom left, where we'll tell you to leave it.
Tick the questions above and your task's quadrant lights up.
What we build
Most studios need a mix. We start with the smallest thing that gives you back the most hours.
Scripts and connections between the tools you already have.
A private web app with one database, and every document generated from it.
Reading, searching and drafting — with your designer checking the result.
Dashboards and reports from your hours, budgets, models and sensors.
Use cases
Real processes from design studios, and what software does with them. Pick your discipline; studio-wide examples apply to everyone.
Supplier PDFs become coded fixture records. Your schedule, fixture booklet and cost estimate are generated from them, in your layout.
Replaces · Copying specs from PDFs into CAD, Excel and slides
A warning when the .LDT or .IES file disagrees with the datasheet on lumen, wattage or colour temperature.
Replaces · Spotting mismatches by eye, or not at all
Find fittings across your past projects and manufacturer catalogues by beam angle, CRI, IP rating — or from a photo.
Replaces · Browsing catalogues and old schedules
DIALux or Relux results collected into one consistent report per room or zone, ready for your client.
Replaces · Reformatting calculation output by hand
Door, window and room schedules pulled from Revit or IFC into your Excel and PDF templates, refreshed on every issue.
Replaces · Recounting and retyping schedules
Gross and net areas per floor and function, calculated from your model and compared with the brief before every submission.
Replaces · Manual area take-offs in spreadsheets
Every issued set frozen with its transmittal. See exactly what changed between revisions, sheet by sheet.
Replaces · Dated folders and transmittal spreadsheets
Notes or recordings turned into decisions and actions per party, filed with your project.
Replaces · Writing minutes after every meeting
Paste a supplier link and the name, dimensions, finish, lead time and price land in your schedule, with an image.
Replaces · Copying product details from websites
Supplier quotes read and lined up item by item, with differences in price and lead time highlighted.
Replaces · Side-by-side PDFs and a calculator
Object data from your collection system flows into lists, labels and layout plans without retyping.
Replaces · Exporting, cleaning and pasting object data
Lux and UV logged per object against its yearly exposure budget, with an alert before a limit is reached.
Replaces · Spot measurements and estimates
Quantities from your drawing and species data from your library, combined into one schedule.
Replaces · Counting symbols and looking up species data
Survey data, photos and condition per pole, tree or object on a map, exportable for the municipality.
Replaces · Spreadsheets and photo folders from site visits
Ask which project used a fitting, a detail or a supplier, and get answers that link to the source file. Can run entirely on your own server.
Replaces · Asking the colleague who remembers
Fee proposals assembled from your scope templates and the hours of comparable past projects, in your layout.
Replaces · Starting every proposal from the last one
Time registration and budgets in one view per project and phase, so overruns show while there is still time to act.
Replaces · End-of-month surprises
One private page per project with the latest approved documents, so nobody works from an old zip file.
Replaces · Sending files by email and WeTransfer
Studio-wide examples are shown with every discipline.
Your stack
You don't have to replace anything. We connect through exports, file formats, APIs and scripts, so your drawing tool stays your drawing tool.
Worked example
How we'd approach a platform for your studio, taken from a current proposal and shown without client details.
Before
Today the fixture booklet is built inside the drawing file, specs are pasted from supplier PDFs, and the same data is retyped into the cost estimate and the presentation.
One meeting at the studio, walking a recent project from specsheet to issued booklet.
Every screen and the studio's own document layouts, clicked through before any code is written.
A folder of PDFs becomes coded fixtures. AI fills the fields; a designer reviews each one, with the PDF alongside.
Booklet as PDF and cost estimate as Excel with working formulas, from the same record. Revisions are frozen per issue.
Projects marked confidential are processed by a local model on the studio's own server.
After
The drawing tool keeps drawing and counting. Everything that is typed, checked or exported moves to one place.
Data and security
You work on confidential buildings and unreleased projects. The setup reflects that from the first line of code.
A dedicated server in the EU, or your own office server.
AI providers configured for zero retention and contractually barred from training on it.
Confidential projects processed by open models on your own hardware. Nothing leaves your building.
Source code, data and documents are yours, with exports in CSV, Excel and JSON at any time.
Process
Nothing is built that you haven't seen first.
We sit with one of your real projects from start to finish and map where your hours go. You get a clear scope and price before anything is built.
Every screen and your document layouts, clicked through together and changed before any code is written.
Short build blocks, each ending in a review where your own files go through the real thing.
Training, user and admin guides, the source code and your data. Small changes stay easy afterwards.
Typical ranges from our service pages, not commitments. The process review gives you the real number.
Background
Hola Studio started by designing and manufacturing lamps, and still lights concerts and theatre. Fixture codes, photometric files and renvooi tables are familiar ground — we speak your language.
North Sea Round Town, Batafest and others
2026
Lighting design and operation for concerts, theatre, club nights and festivals since 2022 — from a 15th-century church in Rotterdam to a touring orchestra — and the field work behind Vaib, our AI lighting designer.
Internal product
2026
An AI lamp finder — photograph your room, get lighting advice and a shortlist from 21,000 lamps, then render the one you like into the photo before you buy.
Internal product
2024
The first AI lighting design platform — it learns the actual rig in the room and lights the show live.
Clients include Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen · Municipality of The Hague · The Hague University of Applied Sciences
FAQ
No. Your drawing and BIM tools keep doing what they're good at. We connect to them through exports, file formats, APIs and scripts, and move only the typing, checking and document work.
No. We use EU-hosted AI with zero retention and no training on your data, and for confidential projects the AI can run entirely on your own server.
Yes. A platform can be hosted on a dedicated EU server in your name, or on the server already in your office, with local AI models for confidential work.
Often the first win is small: one script or one generated document that saves you a day per project. Use the check on this page; if a task is frequent, repeatable and already digital, it's usually worth a conversation.
We don't publish prices, because scope decides it. The process review maps one of your real projects and ends with a clear scope and price before anything is built.
Typically 1–4 weeks for a process review, 4–12 weeks for a focused AI tool or automation, and 6–14 weeks for a studio platform.
You do. You receive the source code, the data and the infrastructure accounts, with no lock-in.
Yes. Hola Studio is based in Rotterdam and works with studios internationally, in English or Dutch.
Tell us how a project moves through your studio today. We'll tell you honestly what's worth automating, and what isn't.
Hola's studio assistant
Hola — I'm Ola. I know how the studio works: what we build, how we scope it, and what engagements usually cost.
Ask me anything, or tell me what you're trying to make.