Extract problems from your books
Updated on August 5, 2026
Book extraction goes through your Theca books page by page and detects the practice exercises they already contain. Unlike generating from a topic, the problems here come from your own material — they are the exercises the author put in the book.
How to start an extraction
From the SimuLab home screen, open the toolbar and click Extract from book. A panel opens where you can:
- Choose one or more Theca books using the search box by title or author.
- Select the Language in which you want the problems to appear.
- If you already have a collection open, folders will be created inside it.
Once you have chosen the books, click Extract problems.
The books must be available in your Theca library. If you don't have books yet, upload them first from theca.noxdragon.com. For more on preparing your books for SimuLab, see the Theca: problem suites to SimuLab guide.
How to follow the progress
Once extraction starts, the panel shows:
- Scanning pages with a current and total page counter.
- How many problems and folders have been created so far.
- Current book out of the total books chosen.
Extraction can take several minutes depending on the size of the book. You can navigate to other sections — the process continues in the background.
What to do if it pauses
Extraction can pause for two reasons:
- Paused: AI quota reached — you used up the AI quota available in your plan. Click Resume when your quota renews or after upgrading your plan.
- Paused: source unavailable — there was a technical issue with a source. Click Resume when the source is ready.
Problems already extracted before the pause are kept. When you resume, extraction continues from where it left off.
What you get when it finishes
When done, the app creates a folder structure that mirrors the book's chapters, with the detected exercises converted into SimuLab problems. Click Open collection to see the result.
If some problems could not be extracted correctly, the app tells you, but the rest remain available.
Difference from generating from a topic
When you generate from a topic, the AI invents a new problem. When you extract from a book, the AI takes exercises already written in the material and converts them to SimuLab format. The content comes from the book, not from the AI.
Frequently asked questions
Can I extract from several books at once? Yes. You can choose more than one book in the same step. Extraction processes them in order and creates separate folders for each.
What happens if I cancel the extraction? Problems already created up to that point are kept. You can view them by opening the corresponding collection.
Why aren't all the exercises in the book detected? The AI detects exercises based on the text of each page. If the book is scanned as an image without a text layer, it may not detect all exercises. Make sure the book is properly indexed in Theca.
How much AI quota does it use? Each scanned page uses AI quota. The exact amount depends on your plan.
Next step
- Theca: problem suites to SimuLab — how to prepare and organize your books in Theca before extracting.
- Generate with AI — create new problems from a topic without needing books.
- Collections — organize extracted problems in your library.