Type
Desktop App
Platform
Windows (Electron)
Environment
Industrial / Shop Floor
Status
Production
The Problem
Legacy Documents,
Modern Demands
Shop floor workers needed reliable access to thousands of documents — Word, Excel, multi-page TIFs, and PDFs — stored on internal network shares. The existing setup required Office 365 licenses and external viewers that have monthly/yearly subscriptions costs.
The ask was simple: make it fast, make it work anywhere on the network, and don't have any monthly/yearly subscriptions costs.
The Challenge
Thousands of mixed-format documents on network shares. Workers needed instant search and full-fidelity rendering with zero dependency on Microsoft Office, cloud services, or external software installations.
The Solution
A self-contained Electron desktop app with a bundled headless LibreOffice engine for document rendering, UTIF.js for high-fidelity TIF display, and a clean asset pipeline. Zero external dependencies at runtime.
Screenshots
The Interface
A modern glassmorphism design built for clarity on shop floor displays. Fast search up front, clean document viewer alongside.
What It Does
Key Features
Built around the real constraints of a shop floor — speed, reliability, and zero tolerance for downtime.
Universal Viewer
Natively renders Word, Excel, PDF, TIF, and Text files — no Microsoft Office or external plugins required.
HiDPI Drawing Engine
Custom canvas pipeline uses devicePixelRatio to keep engineering tolerances razor-sharp on 4K shop floor monitors.
Intelligent Search
Recursive matcher traverses complex network structures and dynamically links part numbers to operations across thousands of files in milliseconds.
Production Shortcuts
F5 batch-prints the Work Instruction and Sketch in one tap. Arrow keys flip through multi-sheet drawings. Full keyboard shortcut guide on F1.
Theater Mode
One-touch toggle hides all UI controls and allocates 100% of screen height to the drawing viewer — built for high-glare industrial screens.
Network Reliability
Copies documents to local temp before rendering, preventing network file-locking and protecting shared drive data integrity across the shop floor.
How It's Built
Tech Stack
Every technology was chosen deliberately to solve a specific constraint of the shop floor environment.
Electron + Node.js
Cross-platform desktop shell. Gives full filesystem access to network shares without a browser security sandbox getting in the way.
LibreOffice (Headless)
Bundled portable LibreOffice renders Word and Excel files to pixel-perfect images with zero Office 365 dependency. The "Invisible Engine."
UTIF.js
TIFF rendering in the browser layer. Handles multi-page industrial TIF files natively without external viewers.
Vanilla JS + CSS3
No frameworks means no bloat. The glassmorphism UI loads instantly and runs lean on older shop floor hardware.