Who it's for
You design the part. Somebody else has to make it, and they tell you weeks late. Upload the model before release: manufacturability findings come back before a process is picked, and six process families are screened with the constraint behind each verdict and a should-cost curve across quantities.
Is this you?
You design the part. Somebody else has to make it — a shop, a foundry, a supplier you have never met — and the first thing you hear back from them lands weeks after the model was released, as a change request you now have to argue for. The geometry has not changed. What changed is that the two millimetres that would have fixed it now cost a schedule slot instead of an afternoon. This page is for the person holding the model, not the person quoting somebody else's print: if your day is inbound RFQs and getting a number back before the buyer moves on, the job-shop page is the one you want. If your day is a CAD session, a release date, and a supplier who tells you in week three what you needed in week one, keep reading. Partimation is decision support, not a guarantee — every verdict names the rule or constraint behind it, and you still confirm it with your supplier and your own engineering judgment before tooling is committed.
A typical day
The model went out on Friday. The first real manufacturability comment comes back as a supplier email in week three, or as a phone call from somebody standing at a machine. At the model it was a design decision. At that point it is a revision, a re-quote, and a date that moves.
You can open a radius, thin a rib, or loosen a tolerance in an afternoon while the part is still soft. Nobody can tell you what any of the three is worth until quotes come back — and quotes come back after the decision that mattered has already been made.
The last part in the family was machined from bar, so this one is drawn to be machined from bar, at a volume nobody re-asked the question at. Design intent follows the assumption, and by the time the real quantity turns up the geometry has already committed you to it.
Draft, undercuts, thin walls, a tolerance the process will never hold. A supplier says they can't hold that, and you have no way to tell whether it is a hard constraint of the process or one shop's preference. Nobody in your building runs a foundry.
What changes
An STL or STEP model, a DXF or PDF drawing, or both together on one job go through the same first look. Detected holes and the overall envelope come back named, each carrying its own confidence, with the part's face counts alongside them. When a drawing and a model both exist, the two are cross-checked on holes, envelope and GD&T-to-face, and anywhere they disagree — or anywhere one of them is simply missing the information — gets flagged for a person rather than resolved quietly.
General manufacturability issues are flagged on any uploaded part before a process has been chosen, so the geometry gets questioned at the point where changing it is still a design decision rather than a change order. Run it on the model you already have, at the review where the wall thickness is still an opinion, and the finding costs an afternoon.
Casting, molding, forging, machining, sheet metal and additive are screened from one upload, each coming back feasible, marginal or infeasible with the constraint that drove the verdict — a named constraint you can design against without having run the process yourself. Every feasible process carries a should-cost curve across quantities, with tool cost amortized into the per-piece figure, and the quantity where one process gets cheaper than another is solved in closed form rather than eyeballed off a chart. Every cost line names the rate, posture setting or engine rule that produced it, so a number you take into a design review can be taken apart line by line.
Where to start
Manufacturability feedback that arrives after release is a change order, not a review. Partimation returns findings on every upload, before a process has been chosen, and runs a real removal simulation against the tooling you actually run to show exactly which stock a cutter cannot reach.
Cast because the last one was cast. Machined because the shop machines. Partimation screens a part against casting, molding, forging, machining, sheet metal and additive together — each verdict naming the constraint behind it — and solves the exact quantity where a cheaper process takes over.
Plenty of RFQs arrive as a scanned print with no CAD model behind them. Partimation reads dimensions, tolerances and GD&T straight off the sheet, scores the confidence of every value, and cross-checks the print against the model on holes, envelope and GD&T-to-face when one finally turns up.
Three sheets scanned to PDF in 2004, no STEP file, and a part you have to remodel. Dimensions, tolerances and GD&T come off the sheet with a confidence score per value and the source each was read from — a should-cost does not, and this page says exactly where the drawing-only path ends.
A 48 mm deep pocket with a 3 mm internal corner passes every CAD check and stops the job at the machine six weeks later. Upload the STEP before the design review: manufacturability findings come back before a process is picked, and a voxel removal simulation quantifies and locates the stock your tooling cannot reach.
A housing drawn for 3-axis machining because the last generation was, with a forecast that just moved from 150 a year to 5,000. One upload screens six process families with the constraint behind each verdict, and solves the exact quantity where one process gets cheaper than another.
FAQ
Geometry checks run on the file itself, with no process decision and no template needed first. Detected holes and the overall envelope come back named, each carrying its own confidence, with the part's face counts alongside them, and general manufacturability findings come with them before any process has been picked. Upload a drawing instead, or a drawing and a model together, and the same intake takes it.
A should-cost curve across quantities comes back for every process the part is feasible in, with tool cost amortized into the per-piece figure rather than sitting beside it as a lump sum. Every cost line names the rate, posture setting or engine rule that produced it, so the number is one you can take apart in a design review instead of waiting for quotes that arrive after the decision is made.
Casting, molding, forging, machining, sheet metal and additive get screened together from one upload, each returning feasible, marginal or infeasible with the constraint that drove the verdict. The quantity where one process gets cheaper than another is solved in closed form rather than eyeballed off a chart, so an undecided volume becomes a range you can design across instead of an assumption inherited from the last part in the family.
A named constraint is the thing to ask for. Each of the six process families comes back feasible, marginal or infeasible with the constraint that drove that verdict, which is readable without ever having stood at the machine or the pour. Partimation is decision support, not a guarantee — confirm the finding with your supplier and your own engineering judgment before tooling is committed.
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