A real case
A customer's fabrication package arrives as one multi-body STEP. Per-part manufacturability findings, a six-family process screen with the constraint behind each verdict, and a coarse clearance screen come back before you price it. Nothing joint-level does: no member schedule, no weld metres, no joints off the model.
The situation
The package lands on Monday and the quote is wanted Thursday: one multi-body STEP of a pump skid, six off — fourteen burned plates, a pair of bent gussets, four machined mounting pads and a bored trunnion block, all of it detailed by somebody else and none of it yours to change without asking. The last skid like it came back at you off the floor twice: a pad nobody could bore in one setup, and a bracket that fouled a flange face. Both were found by a fitter at a bench, three weeks after the number went out, when the cheapest thing left to change was your margin.
Step by step
A multi-body STEP, 3MF or STL splits itself in the assembly split review, which proposes the distinct placed bodies and collapses identical duplicates into a quantity — so fourteen plates that are really four unique parts get priced as four. Every panel after this mounts against the same job, so moving from findings to process screening to cost is a panel switch, not a second upload.
General manufacturability findings come back for every part in the upload before a process has been chosen, each naming the check that caught it. On a skid that means the trunnion block, the machined pads and the plates — the parts a fitter never gets to argue about, because by the time they reach him they are already cut.
Casting, molding, forging, machining, sheet metal and additive get screened together on that same upload, each coming back feasible, marginal or infeasible with the constraint that drove the verdict. A plate detailed to be burned and machined is just a part to that screen, and a named constraint is something you can put in a reply to the customer instead of a preference they can wave off.
A coarse geometric screen runs over the assembly's actual relative placement and flags parts that overlap or sit closer than they should, with a severity on each finding. Advisory is the right word for it — no mating solver, no tolerance stack-up, no fastener check — but a bracket fouling a flange face is exactly its size of problem, and exactly the one that costs three weeks when a fitter finds it instead.
Nothing in this path reads the weldment as a weldment. No member schedule, no section takeoff, no weld metres, and no joints picked out of the geometry; bolted or welded is a call the suite does not make at any scope. The weld numbers that do exist — per-joint process, deposition time, duty cycle, consumables — belong to the handrail and stair configurator, which is driven by height, run and post spacing rather than by a file, and they are cost figures rather than manufacturability findings.
What you get
Thursday's reply goes out with a costed BOM behind it — cheapest feasible route per part, tooling counted once across the job, a critical-path lead time — and the findings and clearance flags attached to the parts they belong to, so the two questions that cost you three weeks last time are raised while they are still the customer's to answer. What it does not carry is a weldment takeoff. Fit-up hours and weld metres on a one-off skid are still an estimator's own build, and treating a per-part roll-up as a fabrication takeoff is how a quote goes out light on the labor that actually sets its price.
Already shipped
Built into PartDFM.
Built into AssemblyDFM.
Built into MFGDFM.
Built into ProcessDFM.
Built into FabDFM.
FAQ
Part-level problems, and only those. Manufacturability findings come back for every part in an uploaded multi-body model before a process has been chosen, each naming the check that caught it, and a coarse geometric screen over the assembly's actual relative placement flags parts that overlap or sit closer than they should. Joint-level problems are not among them.
Weld access, distortion and fit-up sequence are not checked anywhere in the suite today. The weld numbers that do exist — per-joint process, deposition time, duty cycle, consumables — belong to the handrail and stair configurator, which is driven by height, run and post spacing rather than by a file, and they are cost figures rather than manufacturability findings. On an uploaded assembly, part by part is the honest scope.
Casting, molding, forging, machining, sheet metal and additive are screened together on one upload, each returning feasible, marginal or infeasible with the constraint that drove the verdict. A plate detailed to be burned and machined is just a part to that screen, so it gets the same treatment as everything else in the model, and the verdict arrives with a named constraint rather than an opinion.
A coarse geometric screen over the assembly's actual relative placement flags parts that overlap or sit closer than they should, with a severity on each finding. Advisory is the right word for it: no mating solver, no tolerance stack-up, no fastener check. On a skid it is the size of problem that catches a bracket fouling a flange face, which is otherwise found by a fitter at a bench.
Where this fits
You quote weldments where fit-up and arc time set the price, not the steel. What runs in the browser today is the handrail and stair configurator — tonnage, fit-up hours, weld metres, coating area, a should-cost curve — plus routing that prices the coating you send out, on a ledger where every line names its rule.
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.
Get started
Send a model or a drawing and book a walkthrough — or start free and run one through yourself.
Book a demo
Tell us about your shop and we'll set up a walkthrough on a real part.