FAI
Documentation
Software.
Offline-first desktop tool for engineers creating balloon annotations on technical drawings. Built for First Article Inspection (FAI) documentation — place balloons, capture inspection data, and export AS9102-ready reports to PDF and Excel. No subscription, no cloud.
Windows 10/11 · macOS 12+ · Linux · No subscription · No account required
Features
Everything for inspection documentation.
Balloon Annotations
Place numbered balloons on PDF and TIFF drawings with precision. Each balloon carries a full inspection record including designator, requirement, and measurement result.
Grid Zone Tracking
Configure intelligent grid zones (A1, B2, C3…) per drawing page. Balloon locations are automatically recorded as you annotate, eliminating manual position tracking.
GD&T Support
14 geometric tolerance symbols with a built-in feature control frame assembler. Define your own tolerancing profiles and share them across your team for consistent inspection standards.
Verification Mode
A dedicated inspection table lists every balloon with its requirement, measured result, and automatic PASS/FAIL status. Rows are colour-coded green or red so non-conformances are immediately visible — ideal for FAI sign-off reviews.
PDF & Excel Export
Export annotated drawings as PDFs with balloons overlaid at full resolution. Generate colour-coded XLSX inspection tables ready for AS9102 first article inspection records and quality packages.
Automatic OCR Reading
Optical character recognition reads dimension values and text directly from your drawing, pre-filling balloon requirements and reducing manual data entry errors.
Why BallooNote exists
BallooNote was built out of direct experience with First Article Inspection — numbering balloons by hand on printed drawings, then transferring every dimension and result into a spreadsheet one by one. The process was slow, error-prone, and overdue for a proper tool.
The existing solutions were either priced for enterprise procurement or built without a real understanding of the FAI workflow. BallooNote was designed to fill that gap: a focused desktop tool that handles the full inspection documentation process without the overhead.
It runs entirely on your machine. Your drawings never leave it.
Pricing
One-time purchase. No subscription.
Buy once, own it forever. Updates included.
one-time · lifetime licence
- ✓Balloon placement on PDF/TIFF
- ✓Grid zone tracking (A1, B2…)
- ✓Verification mode
- ✓GD&T feature control frames
- ✓PDF & Excel export
- ✓Priority email support
14 days free, full features · Buy & Activate in App
Purchasing happens from inside BallooNote, not on this page — once it’s installed, use Help → Activate License… → Buy a license… to pay and activate in one place.
Secure checkout via Stripe, from inside the app · StartApp House Limited
Step 1
Install
macOS: open the .dmg and drag BallooNote into Applications. Windows may flag the download as uncommon — click Keep anyway, then Run anyway on SmartScreen. Linux ships as a self-contained AppImage — just chmod +x it and run.
Step 2
Try
Full features, no account, no card, for 14 days. Place balloons on a real drawing and export a PDF/Excel report before deciding anything. Trial exports carry a watermark, which goes away once you activate a license.
Step 3
Keep
Ready to keep it? Buy a license and activate from within the app.
FAQ