Lay out plate, sheet steel, or other heavy metal and locate and mark bending and cutting lines, using protractors, compasses, and drawing instruments or templates.

“Lay out plate, sheet steel, or other heavy metal and locate and mark bending and cutting lines, using protractors, compasses, and drawing instruments or templates.” is a core task performed by Boilermakers. Among the occupation's 17 rated tasks, workers place it 13th by importance (#5 most important). About 71% of workers say it is relevant to their job.

This is a single occupation-specific task statement from O*NET. The figures below describe how central the task is to the job and what independent studies measure about AI and this kind of work — not a prediction that the task will be automated.

Work activities this task rolls up to

O*NET groups concrete tasks into broader work activities shared across many occupations.

• Position materials or components for assembly. in Handling and Moving Objects

AI exposure

The OpenAI / Eloundou “GPTs are GPTs” study rates this task E0. No direct exposure — current language models give little or no time savings on this task.

Exposure measures whether a model could meaningfully speed the task up — it is an estimate of overlap with model capabilities, not a measure of whether the work will be done by software. The study's intermediate score (β) for this task is 0.00. Automation potential label: T0.

Other tasks in this occupation

• Study blueprints to determine locations, relationships, or dimensions of parts. · importance 4.1
• Assemble large vessels in an on-site fabrication shop prior to installation to ensure proper fit. · importance 3.9
• Examine boilers, pressure vessels, tanks, or vats to locate defects, such as leaks, weak spots, or defective sections, so that they can be repaired. · importance 3.9
• Inspect assembled vessels or individual components, such as tubes, fittings, valves, controls, or auxiliary mechanisms, to locate any defects. · importance 3.8
• Bell, bead with power hammers, or weld pressure vessel tube ends to ensure leakproof joints. · importance 3.7
• Locate and mark reference points for columns or plates on boiler foundations, following blueprints and using straightedges, squares, transits, or measuring instruments. · importance 3.7
• Shape or fabricate parts, such as stacks, uptakes, or chutes, to adapt pressure vessels, heat exchangers, or piping to premises, using heavy-metalworking machines such as brakes, rolls, or drill presses. · importance 3.6
• Position, align, and secure structural parts or related assemblies to boiler frames, tanks, or vats of pressure vessels, following blueprints. · importance 3.5
• Clean pressure vessel equipment, using scrapers, wire brushes, and cleaning solvents. · importance 3.5
• Repair or replace defective pressure vessel parts, such as safety valves or regulators, using torches, jacks, caulking hammers, power saws, threading dies, welding equipment, or metalworking machinery. · importance 3.5
• Attach rigging and signal crane or hoist operators to lift heavy frame and plate sections or other parts into place. · importance 3.5
• Straighten or reshape bent pressure vessel plates or structure parts, using hammers, jacks, or torches. · importance 3.4
• Shape seams, joints, or irregular edges of pressure vessel sections or structural parts to attain specified fit of parts, using cutting torches, hammers, files, or metalworking machines. · importance 3.4
• Bolt or arc weld pressure vessel structures and parts together, using wrenches or welding equipment. · importance 3.4

See all tasks on the Boilermakers page.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

• O*NET 30.3 U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

@misc{singulariki-task-11444,
  title  = {Lay out plate, sheet steel, or other heavy metal and locate and mark bending and cutting lines, using protractors, compasses, and drawing instruments or templates.},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/tasks/task-11444}
}