HP SitePrint: The Robot That Prints the Layout on the Slab

Reported, not tested. We have not used SitePrint on a Haez job yet. Everything below comes from HP and from contractors quoted in the trade press, and every price carries its date. Nobody paid for this post and we did not get a unit.

The job it replaces

Before a single stud goes up, someone has to put the building on the floor. Two people with a tape, a chalk line and a set of plans snap every wall, door opening and sleeve location onto the slab. It is slow, it is done on hands and knees, and it is where a lot of expensive mistakes start: a wall six inches off becomes a cabinet that doesn’t fit, a sleeve in the wrong place becomes a core drill, a corridor too narrow becomes a failed inspection.

Layout is also the step that turns the drawing into the building. If the model is right and the layout is wrong, the model doesn’t matter.

How it works

SitePrint is, in AEC Magazine’s words, essentially a printer on wheels. It sits on the deck and prints the plan at full scale with a fixed print head on its underside.[1]

• It follows a total station. A robotic total station (supported models include the Trimble RTS573, Topcon LN-150, Leica TS16 and Leica iCON iCR80) tracks a prism on top of the robot from 15 to 300 feet away, after you set it up on two or three control points.[1]
• It prints from your drawings. It imports DXF and DWG files, with an AutoCAD plug-in to push drawings to HP’s cloud platform. From a tablet you print the whole floor, pick individual elements, or sketch an area with a finger, and the software plans the route.[1]
• It handles the jobsite. Seven sensors: four watch for ledges and cut the drive at any drop over 2.5 inches, three detect obstacles. When something is in the way, it prints around it and flags the spot for a reprint. If it loses sight of the total station for more than five seconds, it stops.[1]
• It prints on most surfaces. Water-based or solvent ink, in red, blue or black so trades can be color-coded, on concrete, plywood and pavement as well as terrazzo, vinyl and epoxy.[1]

HP quotes print accuracy of plus or minus 3 mm.[1]

What contractors report

The numbers in the trade press come from HP and from its customers, so read them as best cases, not averages. Skanska reported a layout task dropping from about 7 hours to 45 minutes. A framing and drywall contractor, PDC, reported three weeks of layout done in three days. L5 Drywall reported laying out seven or eight rooms a day instead of two or three, with one person instead of three. Hoar Construction checked nearly every printed point and found them well within tolerance.[1]

HP’s headline claim is layout up to ten times faster than by hand. Its own survey puts the average cost of layout errors at 9.4% of the project budget.[1] Both are vendor numbers. The direction is believable. The size will depend on your job.

What it costs

As reported by AEC Magazine (article last updated May 2025), the robot costs $50,000 in the U.S., and most users pay about 20 cents per square foot printed. That fee covers software, service, maintenance and supplies. Jobs that only need points or light linework can be priced per day.[1] Prices change: confirm with HP or a dealer before you budget.

The hidden line item is the total station. If you don’t already own a supported robotic total station, add it to the cost, or the cost of the surveyor who brings one.

The owner’s math

Take a 20,000-square-foot floor of interior layout. At 20 cents a square foot, the printing fee is about $4,000. Now put your own numbers in:

Break-even = printing fee ÷ loaded hourly cost of your layout crew

If your two-person layout crew costs you $150 an hour fully loaded (use your real number), the robot has to save about 27 crew-hours on that floor to pay its fee. Going by the contractor reports above, that’s plausible on repetitive work like multifamily units, hotel rooms, offices and tenant fit-outs.

Then count what doesn’t show up in the hours: one wall in the wrong place, found after drywall, can cost more than the whole printing fee. That’s where the 9.4% number, even discounted as a vendor figure, gets interesting.

The $50,000 purchase is a different decision. It only makes sense if you have enough square footage every year to keep the robot busy. For most companies, paying per job or bringing in a layout partner who owns one is the smarter first step.

What it can’t do

• It can’t fix a bad model. It prints exactly what the drawing says, so drawing errors arrive on the slab at full scale. Coordinate first, print second.
• It needs a clear, flat deck. Debris, stored material and standing water mean reprints and flagged areas.
• It depends on line of sight. Columns, shoring and busy crews block the total station, and complex floors may need several setups.
• It needs a trained operator. Someone still sets up the total station, controls the job and checks the output.
• Battery life claims vary. AEC Magazine reports up to four hours of constant layout per battery, with two batteries in the box.[1] Plan for swaps on a long day.
• It doesn’t replace the surveyor. Control points, building lines and elevations still come from a licensed surveyor.

Who should buy it, rent it or skip it

• Buy: interior and framing contractors and GCs who self-perform layout on large floor plates or repetitive multifamily, with steady volume year-round.
• Pay per job: GCs with a few larger projects a year, like an eight-unit townhouse job or a commercial tenant improvement. Bring in the robot for the layout and keep the money in the business.
• Skip for now: single-unit renovations. On one condo or one house, a good layout crew with a laser is still faster to mobilize.

Our verdict

SitePrint is the clearest example of what this publication is about: the drawing and the building getting connected without a person in between redoing the work by hand. It won’t make bad drawings good. It will make good drawings land on the slab exactly where they belong, faster than a crew can snap them. If your company does repetitive layout, run the math above on your next job. When we run it on one of our jobs, we’ll report our own numbers here.