A real case
Two approved suppliers, five working days each, and a program cost review on Thursday morning. Upload the multi-body STEP the day engineering releases it and hold a costed BOM roll-up — cheapest feasible route per part, tooling counted once, critical-path lead time — before a single quote comes back.
The situation
Engineering releases rev C of a six-part bracket-and-housing sub-assembly on Monday morning. The program cost review is Thursday at nine. Your two approved suppliers have both quoted this family before and neither has ever come back inside five working days, which means the review will happen with no supplier price on any of the six parts. The number you are asked for is a program-level figure at 1,200 sets a year, and the only honest answers available to you are last program's price with a percentage on it, or nothing. Neither one survives a question from the room, and both of them get written into a budget you will be held to for two years.
Step by step
A multi-body STEP, 3MF or STL goes in as one job and splits into its placed parts. Monday morning is the point at which you have everything the supplier will have, and nothing after that adds information you are waiting on — the wait is the supplier's queue, not the model. Starting the number on Monday rather than the following week is the whole change this makes to a buyer's calendar.
The assembly rolls up into a single costed BOM: the cheapest feasible route for each part at your quantity, non-recurring tooling counted once per part rather than once per quote, and a lead time taken off the part that actually sits on the critical path instead of the sum of everything on the list. A coarse geometric screen also flags parts that overlap or sit closer than they should — advisory only, not a mating solver and not a tolerance stack-up, so treat a flag as something to ask engineering about rather than a released finding.
Every specialist panel mounts against the same job, so moving from the roll-up into a single part's cost, its process verdicts or its route is a panel switch rather than a second upload. When the review turns into questions about the housing specifically, the housing's own ledger is one click from the program number you just presented, built off the same file and the same rates.
Every estimate carries a confidence band and names its basis: a published prior, a calibration built from recorded actuals, a deterministic rule, or a flag that the figure needs a person to look at it. That is what turns a number you built in three days into something you can present honestly — you say which parts of the roll-up rest on a rule and which ones you are putting a caveat on, rather than presenting all six with the same unspoken confidence.
No supplier price document is an input here. There is no way to upload a received quote and diff it against the roll-up, so the comparison happens the way it always has, by reading their total against your itemized lines. The difference is that by Friday of the following week you are checking a quote against a figure you already own, instead of meeting it with nothing.
What you get
Thursday's review gets a program-level cost built from the released geometry rather than last program's price with a percentage on it: a per-part figure at 1,200 sets, tooling counted once, a lead time off the real critical-path part, and a stated basis for each estimate so the caveats are specific instead of general. When the two supplier quotes arrive the following week they arrive into a conversation that already has a number in it, and a supplier's figure that sits well above yours becomes a question about a named operation on one part. It is decision support and it names the rule behind every line, which is exactly what makes it safe to present a week before anybody else has priced the job.
Already shipped
Built into PartDFM.
Built into AssemblyDFM.
Built into RouteDFM.
Built into PartDFM.
Built into CostDFM.
Built into CostDFM.
FAQ
Build the number in parallel instead of waiting on it. The released model is everything the supplier has, so a multi-body STEP, 3MF or STL uploaded the day engineering releases it rolls up into a costed BOM — cheapest feasible route per part, tooling counted once, and a lead time off the real critical-path part — days before the first quote comes back. The wait becomes the supplier's queue rather than a gap in what you know.
A costed BOM roll-up off the assembly model does exactly this. The multi-body file splits into its placed parts, each part gets its cheapest feasible route at your quantity, non-recurring tooling is counted once per part rather than once per quote, and the lead time comes off the part genuinely on the critical path instead of the sum of the list. A coarse interference screen runs alongside it, advisory only.
Read the stated basis on each estimate and caveat the ones that ask for it. Four bases are possible: a published prior, a calibration built from recorded actuals, a deterministic rule, or an explicit flag that the number needs human review. A figure resting on a deterministic rule carries itself; a needs-human-review flag is the one to name out loud before somebody in the room finds it later.
An itemized figure is what turns that gap into a specific question. Every cost line traces to a named rate, a posture setting or a rule in the engine, so a supplier sitting well above the roll-up can be asked about one operation, one rate or one quantity assumption rather than asked in general why the price is what it is. Reading their quote against yours is manual work — no supplier price document is an input to the suite.
Where this fits
You buy parts you did not design, priced by suppliers whose numbers you cannot take apart. Partimation gives the buy side its own should-cost: an itemized ledger where every line names its rate or rule, a process verdict that names the constraint behind it, and the exact quantity where a cheaper method takes over.
Every day an RFQ sits unanswered is a day closer to landing on a faster shop's desk. Upload the model and get a ranked manufacturing route back; send the drawing alone and get its tolerances and GD&T read out while you chase the model, rather than losing the day waiting on it.
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