Quoting STEP assemblies

Customers often send a STEP assembly rather than flat parts: a frame or a cabinet with brackets you cut, fasteners you buy in and sub-assemblies you weld. Assembly quotation prices that whole model as one product: CUTL suggests buy or make per item, laser-prices the parts you make, collects supplier prices, adds your labour and turns the total into a selling price and a customer quote.

What it is

Assembly quotation lives in the Quotation panel of the STEP viewer, on a review whose model is an assembly. Single-part models have no Quotation panel; price those with Quoting and cost. Every member of the owning team can edit the quotation; invited people and external reviewers never see it.

The cost of the product is built from four kinds of lines:

The operations of each part (drilling, bending, turning, painting and so on) live in its route, in the Routing tab next to the Quotation panel. See Routing.

Starting a quotation

Under the panel's title sits one collapsible section, closed by default. Its summary line always shows the number of Products, the order total (or no price for N items), and chips such as 3 not calculated, 1 failed or Filtered, so a closed section never hides what needs attention. Open it to reach Products (how many you are quoting), Markup, %, Selling price per product, the Order total and the filters All, Buy, Make, No price, Search by name and Flat list. Everything else is in the panel's ☰ menu.

How CUTL suggests buy or make

Every row carries a round chip: B for buy, M for make. CUTL sets the first suggestion with these rules, in this order:

1. The item matches a standard part pattern (bolts, nuts, washers and the like, by standard number or by the shape of the name, such as "Bolt M8x20"): Buy.
2. The item's name or designation starts with one of your team's own-part prefixes: Make. The prefix must sit at the start of the name or right after a separator such as a space, dot or bracket, and case does not matter. With the prefix ABC, the names ABC.715.001 and (abc) bracket match, XABC.715 does not.
3. The geometry is a sheet or tube part: Make.
4. Anything else: Buy, shown with a dashed ? chip that means "please check".

Click a chip to switch it. A switch you make by hand is kept when you later run Analyse again. If a row was wrongly matched to a standard part, Not a standard part in its row menu removes the match.

Administrators set the prefixes under Team Settings, Own parts: designation prefixes, and the patterns under Standard parts. To apply changed settings to an open quotation, use Analyse again… in the panel menu; it shows what would change first and keeps everything set by hand.

Shaping the tree

The quotation follows the model's tree, but you can reshape it to match how the product is really built:

• Group into a sub-assembly… (tick two or more positions under the same parent, then More): makes a new sub-assembly the CAD did not draw, such as a welded body. You give it a name; it gets its own operations, station kit and route, and the tag grouped by you. Ungroup in its row menu puts the positions back.
• Collect into one part (row menu of a sub-assembly): turns a branch you buy as one piece into a single purchased line, priced by a supplier link or by hand. Expand restores it exactly as it was.
• Edit name and quantity… (in the item dialog): fixes an unnamed item or a quantity that differs from the model, such as eight bolts drawn and twelve used. A bought item can also be counted in metres or kilograms here, for cable or profile bought by length or weight.
• Flat list: shows one row per item instead of the tree, sorted by name, with identical parts merged into one row and their quantities added up. Switching the chip on a merged row switches every identical part at once.

Pricing parts you make

Sheet and tube parts to make are laser-cut and are not priced at the start. Price them with Calculate in the row's menu, Calculate manufacturing for ticked rows, or Calculate all parts to make.

Clicking a row opens its item dialog, with a 3D preview of that item alone, its size and mass, and its Part class (Sheet and Tube are calculated, Free form and Not cut are priced by their operations or by hand). A calculated laser part has three tabs:

• Calculation: material (matched from the model where possible), price per m², cutting mode, coefficients and the Price breakdown. The breakdown has its own line Operations (route) for the part's route operations and outside services per piece, so the lines add up to Cost per part. The cutting row of the route is not in it: cutting is already priced in Cutting per part.
• Extended calculation: the batch costing in cost-only mode, without automatic nesting, so you type Parts per sheet yourself. If the material has no sheet size you want, Add sheet under the sheet row opens New sheet size: enter the width and height and Save adds that size to the material in your dictionary for good, and picks it.
• Additional materials: supplementary materials only, such as fixings or packaging, picked from your dictionary with a quantity and unit price.

The dialog's header shows the part's route in one line, for example Route: 3 ops · € 3.15/pc, with a link that opens it in the Routing tab. Below the tabs, the PMI (technical information) table shows the dimensions, tolerances, roughness and threads the model carries, and you can add rows of your own (saved with Save, for this quotation only). Holes opens the viewer's hole list for the part.

For many parts at once, tick them and use More, Set material or Set cutting mode. Set price… (in the row menu, the dialog or More) gives a part a price by hand instead of a calculation; Use calculation switches it back.

A part to make that is not sheet or tube (a turned shaft, say) is priced by Sum of operations or Manual. Its Manufacturing operations table is read-only in the quotation: change the operations in the part's route.

When a calculation fails

Sometimes CUTL cannot calculate one part, for example because it cannot flatten the shape. The quotation stays ready; only that row reads Calculation failed in red (hover it for the reason) and the summary shows a red N failed chip. Open the part and press Calculate again, give it a price with Set price…, or change its class to Free form or Not cut and price it by its operations or by hand. Calculate all parts to make retries every failed part together with the ones not calculated yet. Until then the part counts in no price for N items.

Bought parts and supplier links

For a bought item you type a Cost per piece (or a price per metre or per kilogram for items counted by length or weight), or you ask the supplier for it.

The supplier opens the link without an account, on a phone or a computer. The page shows only that one item, with its quantity, its size and a 3D view of that item alone. They enter a price, an optional lead time in days and a comment, then press Send price; a Discussion thread lets you talk about that item. They never see the rest of your assembly or your other prices. The page opens in the language you use CUTL in when you create the link.

The received price becomes the item's cost. You can still type your own price over it, and Revoke stops the link at once while keeping a price already received. An item has one active link at a time.

Sub-assemblies and labour

A sub-assembly costs the Sum of components (parts to make, purchased items, assembly operations and post-assembly processing, counted at every level below it), or a Manual price when the sub-assembly price does not have to equal its parts. A sub-assembly marked Buy becomes one purchased line, with its own supplier link.

Labour is added in the sub-assembly's Assembly operations table with Add operation. Each line has an operation, its Equipment, Setup, min, Per piece, min, a Qty (how many times the operation is done on one sub-assembly) and a Note. The Rate, €/h is read-only: it comes from the line's equipment, or, when the line names none, from the operation's default rate in your operations dictionary. Tick After assembly for work such as painting that counts as post-assembly processing. These operations are also the sub-assembly's route in the Routing tab; while that route is approved, the table is read-only and shows who approved it.

In plain words, the cost of a labour line per product is: the hourly rate divided by 60, multiplied by the per-piece minutes times the quantity, plus the setup minutes shared out over every unit in the order. Setup is paid once per order, so it gets cheaper per product as the order grows.

A Phantom sub-assembly is not assembled on its own: its operations are switched off, it is left out of the flat list, and its parts go straight into its parent's station kit.

Markup, selling price, margin and lead time

The whole assembly has one Markup, %. From it CUTL calculates the Selling price per product (the cost of one product plus the markup, rounded up by your team's rounding rule), the Margin and the Lead time, which is the longest supplier lead time among the items.

To charge a fixed price, type it into Selling price per product; it is never rounded, and an Actual markup line shows the markup it carries. Back to the calculated price undoes it. Administrators set the rounding under Selling price in quotations: to the cent, or up to a whole 1, 10 or 100.

While some items have no price, the known items are summed and the total is marked (incomplete). Click no price for N items to list them.

When your parts have routes, the section also shows Ready in ~N working days, the production estimate from the Routing tab.

Quote quantities and cost by batch size

Customers often ask "what if we order more?". Quantities… in the panel menu opens Quote quantities: up to three order quantities (say 1, 10 and 50) and which one is Most likely. CUTL keeps them in ascending order. Clear removes them.

Open the whole assembly's dialog with Cost of the product… in the panel menu. Besides the cost lines and markup, it shows a Cost by batch size table with rows for Unit cost, Total and Selling price per product. Its columns are your saved quote quantities, with the most likely one marked ★; with none saved, they are 1, 10 and 100 plus your current Products quantity. Because setup is shared over the order, it shows why ten units cost less each than one.

After a new version of the model

When you upload a new version of the STEP file, CUTL compares it with the quotation and keeps your decisions on everything that did not change. Changed rows are marked and the badge reads changed:

A marked row is read-only until you accept it, with the green check on the row or Accept all in the banner. Accepting a shape changed part that has a calculated price asks first, because that price belongs to the old shape: after Accept the part shows Part not calculated, and Calculate prices it again on the new shape.

Outputs

Everything is downloaded from the panel menu:

The customer quote never shows cost, markup or margin. The markup is spread over the rows in proportion to their cost, so the rows add up to the selling price. The seller is your team's default organisation, with VAT by its rules.

Coins

Each laser-cut part to make that is sent for calculation costs 100 coins, whether you use Calculate, Calculate manufacturing, Calculate all parts to make, Calculate again or recalculate a part, including after accepting a new shape. If a calculation fails, the coins are refunded. Starting the quotation, Analyse again, supplier links, setting materials and cutting modes, and every download are free. See Coins and billing.

Limits

• Up to 5,000 items in a quotation.
• Sub-assemblies deeper than three levels are flattened: their parts are listed one level up with the tag from a deeper level. Grouping that would go deeper than three levels is refused.
• One active supplier link per item.
• Markup is set on the whole assembly only, not per item.
• Up to three quote quantities.
• Extended calculation inside a quotation has no automatic nesting, and assembly quotes carry no rush or shipping charge.
• Print on the station lists is still in development; use the CSV downloads.
• Prefix and standard-part changes apply on the next analysis.
• Older uploads have no sheet or tube reading, so they get no automatic Make suggestion until you upload a new version.
• Nothing is written back into the STEP file.

To review the model with your customer before you quote it, see the STEP viewer.