See Partimation work — process, drawing, features, priced route

A walk through a real job in Partimation: the part screened against every process, the drawing cross-checked against the model, the features a machinist would touch detected and costed, and the route ranked by price with its reasoning attached. Real screens, in the order you meet them.

Four screens, in the order you meet them

Screen the part against every process at once

One upload, and the part is checked against casting, die casting, plaster mould, machining and the rest together — not one at a time, and not after somebody has already decided. Every verdict carries the measurement that produced it, so a "no" is an argument you can check rather than an opinion you have to take.

Investment, high-pressure die, plaster mould, CNC from stock, green sand and permanent mould, each marked feasible, marginal or infeasible — with the thinnest wall measured at 1.47 mm set against each process's own minimum, and the undercuts that would need cores or slides.

Cross-check the drawing against the model

Attach the DXF or PDF and the dimensions, tolerances and threads are read off the drawing and compared with the geometry. It is careful about what it is: it harvests the drawing's text, and says on screen that it is not a GD&T interpreter.

Two flags on one flange. A diameter callout on the drawing matches no hole in the model — revision skew, or a feature nobody modelled. And a ±0.05 mm tolerance on a 44 mm dimension is tighter than the ±0.8 mm the process holds, so machining stock gets planned in rather than discovered later.

See what a machinist would actually have to touch

Features are detected and counted, each with a confidence figure beside it, and the ones a drawing would tolerance as machined can be marked as such. As-cast capability and machined capability sit next to each other, so the cost of a tight callout is visible at the point somebody decides to make it.

Twelve holes, six counterbores, eighteen countersinks, plus pockets, flats, fillets and bosses — each class with its key dimension and how confident the detection is, against as-cast ±0.13 mm and machined ±0.1 mm.

Get the route, priced, with the reasoning attached

The whole manufacturing route comes back as ranked cards — not a single number. Each one carries a price per piece, a lead time, the chain of steps behind it, a confidence range and the tooling it would take, which is what lets somebody argue with it instead of just believing it.

Sheet metal at $29.38 a piece on a four-day lead comes out cheapest, quickest and fewest steps at this quantity; turning, CNC from billet and the two investment routes follow, each with its own confidence range and tooling NRE.

Short clips, one job each

Every clip is a single screen of the running app, recorded end to end, with subtitles on. Watch the two that match your day and skip the rest.

Drop the whole RFQ, not one part

A job shop's day arrives as a stack, so the intake takes a stack. Five CAD files go in together, each becomes its own job, and the table tracks all of them at once — uploading, analysing, done — with a manufacturability verdict beside each one as it lands.

Five files uploaded and analysed in parallel, each with its own live status row
A verdict per part as it finishes, not a thumbnail — findings and process fit ready to open
Opening one job leaves the rest running; the queue survives navigating away and back

More about PartDFM

Tell it what the part really quoted at

When the real quote comes back different from the estimate, the feedback screen takes the correction as structured data rather than a complaint — what the feedback is about, a verdict, a reason code, and the number the part actually quoted at.

Feedback is scoped to a specific line — the cost estimate — with an explicit override verdict
A reason code from a fixed list, not free text, plus the real price per piece
Recorded corrections feed the calibration that tightens later confidence bands

More about CostDFM

Turn the analysis into something you can send

Every analysis in the workspace ends as a deliverable. The report step lists what each solver produced, live, and you pick the sections a customer should actually receive — then take it as a filtered report, a PDF, or the whole package.

One line per analysis kind, marked done or still running with its progress
Internal working — the search tree — can be left out; the traveler prints one operation per line for a supervisor to sign
Report, mould and pattern files and component files download together as one zip

More about RouteDFM

Put two jobs side by side

Every part you have analysed stays in the history, listed by alloy, weight and timestamp, and reopens without a re-upload or a re-run. Tick two of them and the comparison is a table, not an argument from memory.

Any past job reopens instantly — no second upload, no second analysis
Weight, volume and findings compared head to head, with every differing row highlighted
Casting rows compare too: yield, riser volume, solidification time and fill percentage

More about PartDFM

A part library that remembers decisions

Distinct geometry lands in the library on its own, deduplicated by shape hash, so a part named once is found again on every later upload. Group parts into an assembly and what comes back is a costed bill of materials rather than a list.

Name a part in the library and the name follows that geometry across future uploads
Each BOM line rolls up over that part's cheapest feasible route; change the lot quantity and the whole BOM re-costs
Revisions link under their root part — revision A against B shows findings fixed, weight moved and cost moved, method by method

More about AssemblyDFM

Fabrication, parametric or imported

Partimation is not only castings. The configurator takes a handrail as parameters — twelve metres of run, standard parts, a lot of eight — or takes the steel bill of materials straight out of your detailing model, and builds the same should-cost ledger either way.

Labour, material and overhead line by line, with a price curve across quantities and rule-flag advisories
Members parsed from an imported steel list with their sections and grades, joints detected
A BS EN 1090 execution class set from consequence, service and production category, printed on the floor traveler

More about FabDFM

Your rates, and a test before you commit

Rates Studio is every rate the cost model uses — labour, overhead, material, logistics, tooling, every process group — searchable and editable. Type something implausible and it warns you it is outside the sanity band; it warns, it does not block.

The accept-list lives here: which processes you run in-house, which you broker, which you decline
Set a step to brokered and every later quote prices it with the broker markup, labelled
Draft rates run against one of your own real jobs first — live against draft, side by side, nothing saved until you apply

More about CostDFM

One window for how your shop actually runs

The shop profile is a posture for every process — in-house, brokered, or not accepted — and it changes what you see rather than what the engine believes. Set a process you do not run to not accepted and it drops out of your methods and routes, behind a show-all toggle.

Feasibility never changes; the filter is on display, and the hidden options are one tick away
The scoring weights behind the automatic pull-axis choice are on screen and tunable
The drawing-reading AI provider is your choice, and the rate tables are searchable and overridable inline rather than buried in a config file

More about ProcessDFM

Routes, ranked, with the tradeoff left visible

Every route on the screen is a complete manufacturing plan the engine built and priced. Cheapest, quickest and fewest steps are three different winners from the same candidates — and all three picks are shown rather than collapsed into one recommendation.

A confidence range instead of a fake-precise number, with the tooling cost separated out
One row per department, and a transfer row between them carrying real handling minutes and queue days
Routes through processes you do not accept are hidden until you ask, then tagged and priced with the markup; every route carries its own traveler

More about RouteDFM

The suite, desk to shop floor

Castimation for casting, configurators for fabrication, one shared workspace from CAD to cost — and the same workspace reframed for a phone, so a finding can be checked at the machine instead of back at the office.

One job, one model, every module mounted against it — moving between tools is not a re-upload
The full workspace on a desk; the same analysis and the same model framed for a phone screen

More about Partimation

Frequently asked questions

Does Partimation need a 3D model, or is a drawing enough to start?

A 3D model drives the process screening and the feature detection. A drawing adds the dimensions, tolerances and threads that geometry alone cannot show, and when both are present they are cross-checked against each other — which is how a callout that matches no modelled feature gets caught before it reaches a quote.

Why does every process verdict come with a sentence attached?

Because a verdict nobody can check is a verdict nobody will trust. Each fit result names the measurement behind it — a wall thickness against that process's minimum, an undercut count against what the tooling can core — so a marginal result can be argued with, designed around, or accepted on purpose.

How precise are the detected feature counts?

Each detected class carries its own confidence figure on screen rather than being presented as certainty, and the suggested machining candidates can be accepted or ignored one at a time. Detection is there to save the first pass of counting, not to replace the person checking it.

Book a demo