---
title: "Partimation — stop losing margin to quotes nobody can explain"
url: https://partimation.com/costing/
description: "CostDFM is the should-cost engine behind every Partimation and Castimation quote — rate libraries, quantity curves, and tooling amortization, worked the same way whether the job gets milled, welded, printed, or cast. Every line names the rule behind it. Start free."
product: "CostDFM"
domain: costdfm.com
---

# Stop losing margin to quotes nobody can explain — and always know why the number is what it is.

*Lost bids · margin erosion · hours burned on manual quotes*

Every process running its own spreadsheet costs you real money: bids lost to slower, inconsistent estimates, margin quietly eaten by jobs quoted on gut feel, and estimators spending hours rebuilding a takeoff instead of chasing the next job. CostDFM is the should-cost engine behind every Partimation and Castimation quote — rate libraries, quantity curves, and tooling amortization worked the same way whether the job gets milled, welded, printed, or cast — so every line names the rule that produced it, and every estimate carries a confidence band that tightens as your own actuals come in.

- **One engine** — every process family prices off the same cost model
- **Confidence banded** — every estimate names its basis — prior or calibrated
- **Quantity curves** — should-cost at every quantity break, tooling amortized
- **Your rates** — your machine rates and posture, not a generic average

Free to start · no credit card · your rates stay yours.

## A should-cost model shouldn't depend on which spreadsheet built it.

- **Every process has its own black box** — Machining has one spreadsheet, welding another, casting a third — built by whoever had time, and nobody left can explain why two similar jobs land on different numbers.
- **A rate times a guess isn't a should-cost** — A defensible estimate needs a real cost model — rates, posture, tooling amortization, quantity breaks — not a cycle-time guess multiplied by a shop rate and called a quote.
- **Actuals come back, and nothing updates** — The job runs, the real numbers land, and the model never learns from them — so the next quote repeats the same miss.

## The same cost model, every time, and you can see inside it.

- **One model, every process — The same engine prices machining, fabrication, additive, and casting** — Rates, station posture, and cost drivers are computed the same way regardless of process, so a should-cost from one process family is genuinely comparable to another — not two different guesses side by side.
- **Every line has a reason — No number without the rule behind it** — Cost lines trace back to a named rate, a posture setting, or a rule in the engine — never an opaque total. If you don't trust a line, you can see exactly what produced it.
- **Priced at every quantity — Should-cost curves with tooling amortized correctly** — See the price at prototype, low-rate, and production quantities, with tooling and setup amortized across the run — not a single number that only holds at one quantity.
- **Learns from what actually happened — Confidence bands that tighten as your actuals come in** — Every estimate carries a basis — prior or calibrated — and when your ERP actuals feed back in, the band narrows around your shop's real performance instead of staying a generic industry guess forever.

## Four steps from a job to a should-cost you can defend.

1. **Feed it a job** — A part, a process, and a quantity — from any Partimation module, or entered directly.
2. **See the cost drivers** — Rates, station posture, setup, and tooling amortization come out named, not bundled into one total.
3. **Check the curve** — See the should-cost at every quantity break, with a confidence band on each point.
4. **Calibrate from actuals** — Feed real job actuals back in and the band tightens around your shop's own numbers going forward.

## Start free. Upgrade when your rates need to be yours.

Priced for a one-person estimator and a multi-process shop alike. Estimating is unmetered — run as many jobs as you like.

| Tier | Price (EUR / USD / GBP) | What you get |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free | €0 / $0 / £0 | 10 estimates a month; Standard rate library; Should-cost curves; No credit card |
| Pro | €199 /seat · mo / $199 /seat · mo / £169 /seat · mo | Unlimited estimates; Full quantity curves; Cost-line breakdowns, exports |
| Shop | €699 /mo · 5 seats / $699 /mo · 5 seats / £595 /mo · 5 seats | Everything in Pro; Your shop's own rates & posture; Actuals-based calibration, API access |
| On-prem | €15k yr 1, then €10k renewal / $15k yr 1, then $10k renewal / £12.5k yr 1, then £8.5k renewal | Runs on your hardware; Signed updates, never phones home; 10 seats |
| Enterprise | from €25k / from $25k / from £21k /yr | Multi-site licensing, custom rate tables and rules, a model tuned on your own actuals, and an SLA. |

EUR and GBP prices exclude VAT, added at checkout where it applies. Early adopters keep their price as the suite grows.

## In the cloud by default. Behind your firewall when it has to be.

- **Cloud — Nothing to install** — Sign in and estimate from any browser. We run the compute, ship the updates, and keep your rates yours — the shared model only ever learns from your own actuals to calibrate your bands.
- **On-prem & air-gapped — For rates and costs that can't leave the building** — Aerospace and anyone who can't put shop rates in someone else's cloud can run the whole thing on their own hardware. Licenses and updates are signed files — it never phones home, so an air-gapped install stays air-gapped.

## CostDFM prices every module in the Partimation suite.

One cost model, called by machining, fabrication, additive, and casting — see the rest of the suite at [partimation.com/#modules](https://partimation.com/#modules).

## Frequently asked questions

#### How do I show a customer why the number is what it is?

Every cost line traces back to a named rate, a posture setting, or a rule in the engine — never an opaque total. If you don't trust a line, you can see exactly what produced it. Hand a buyer the ledger and the argument stops being your word against theirs: it becomes a rate they can check and a quantity break they can read for themselves.

#### Where does the confidence number on an estimate come from?

Every result carries a confidence value and names which of four things it rests on: a published prior, a calibration built from your own shop's actuals, a deterministic rule, or a flag that it needs human review. Reading the basis tells you what to do next — a deterministic rule needs no second opinion, and a needs-human-review flag is where an estimator's time actually belongs.

#### It doesn't know our machines or our rates — can we put our own in?

Your shop's machine rates, labor rates, and cost model get set once in Rates Studio, and every quote across every process pulls from them. Rates are edited the way a shop's rates actually change — a machine class re-rated, a burden moved, a station's posture adjusted — instead of a fixed price book with a manual correction applied afterwards by whoever remembers to.

#### What happens when a quote turns out to be wrong?

A correction on a cost line — what actually happened on the job — feeds a calibration record. As real actuals come in, the confidence bands tighten around your own shop's performance instead of staying a generic published prior. The miss becomes an input, so the next quote on a similar job starts closer than the last one did.

## Related pages

- [ToolDFM](https://partimation.com/tooling/)
- [RouteDFM](https://partimation.com/routing/)
- [AssemblyDFM](https://partimation.com/assembly/)
- [MachDFM](https://partimation.com/machining/)
- [Quoted and actual keep diverging, and nothing learns | Partimation](https://partimation.com/solutions/quote-accuracy-drift/)
- [Every quote waits on one estimator | Partimation](https://partimation.com/solutions/quoting-bottleneck/)
- [No defensible number behind the price — Partimation](https://partimation.com/solutions/should-cost-basis/)

## Put your next job through it.

Estimate a real job free in your browser, or book a walkthrough set up for your shop's rates and processes.

## Tell us about your shop.

We reply within one business day.

> CostDFM is decision support, not a guarantee — every cost line names the rate or rule behind it, and every band names its basis. Validate against your own shop's numbers before you commit to a quote.