It is Thursday, about four in the afternoon, and three RFQs have come in since lunch. Each one has a STEP file attached. One has a PDF drawing too. The other two just say "see model".
You know these jobs. A housing, a bracket, a couple of spacers. You could quote them in your sleep, if someone would just tell you how big they are.
So you flag them for later.
The model is the slow part
Opening a STEP file is not hard. Getting a quote out of one is.
First you need a computer with CAD on it, and that is usually the one in the office, not the one by the machines. Then you open the model, find the overall size, and decide what stock it comes out of. Plate or bar. How much to leave on each side. Then you work out what that block weighs, look up what you paid for 6061 last month, and do the math.
None of it is difficult. All of it takes twenty minutes a part, and it needs you sitting down with nothing else going on. In a small shop, that means after everyone has gone home.
Friday the machines run late. Saturday is your kid's hockey game. Sunday night, the three STEP files are still sitting there, and you quote them tired, from the overall size and a feeling about the hours.
Meanwhile, on Friday morning
Somewhere, another shop answered Friday morning. Maybe their price was a little higher. It did not matter much, because they were first, and the buyer had a deadline too.
That is the part that stings. You did not lose on price, or on quality. You lost because the job needed you to sit down with a model for an hour, and that hour did not exist until Sunday.
What you were really doing
Look at what you were doing with that model. You were not engineering anything. You were reading off a handful of numbers:
- How big is it, measured square to the part, not to however it was drawn.
- What stock does it come out of, with your allowance on each side.
- What does that stock weigh, and what does it cost at your price.
- How much of it turns into chips.
Every one of those is a measurement. A computer can take it in a second. The judgement, how many setups, which machine, what the tolerances do to the hours, is still yours. But the measuring should not wait for a free evening.
What this looks like in Quotara
This is why we built 3D model reading into Quotara.
Add the customer's STEP file to a quote, or drop it into Quinn's file analysis, and a line appears under it within a few seconds. Size. Stock with your allowance. Weight and cost from your own material prices. Surface area. How much of the stock gets removed. If it looks like a turned part, it offers round bar instead of a block. If there are several parts in the file, it lists each one and counts the repeats.
The file is measured right in your browser. It stays with the quote and is never sent to the AI. Quinn gets the numbers and drafts the quote from them: the material line from the real stock weight, and the labour from the size, the material coming off, and what your similar jobs really took.
The model shows the shape, not the tolerances or the finish, so when there is a drawing, add it too. Quinn reads both, and says plainly which numbers it measured and which hours it estimated, so you know exactly what to check.
Then you check it, change what you know better, and send it. On Thursday.
Try it on the next one
Next time an RFQ comes in with a model and no drawing, do not flag it for later. Drop it in and look at what comes back before you decide it needs an evening.
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