How to Increase Quoting Accuracy with SOLIDWORKS Costing

A lot of things in life come down to cost. This is especially true when it comes to manufacturing and making the most efficient and effective decisions for your business. SOLIDWORKS Costing is a tool created to help you do just this.

Costing Overview 

Designers’ decisions are centered around the cost to manufacture, and manufacturers are focused on generating accurate quotes for customers. The costing tool updates the cost required as the designs are updated. The system works alongside your design, automatically changing as your design does. You receive a complete and up-to-date cost breakdown to create customized results benefiting your business. Become more profitable, productive and efficient with the help of SOLIDWORKS Costing.

Watch our short webinar for a demo of the SOLIDWORKS Costing tool:

How SOLIDWORKS Costing Works

With the costing tool, manufacturability and costs are equally important to design functionality. This means the tool uses preexisting standard manufacturing templates that match cost to manufacturing features. So while you do the designing, the tool is figuring out exactly how much it will cost to turn your design to an end-use part. 

Calculating Cost

In SOLIDWORKS Costing, everything is customizable, ready to use and beneficial to you. With these templates, the costs of material, machines and labor are already known. Once the tool recognizes which manufacturing processes are needed, they are then categorized, ranging from cut paths and bends to holes and even milling operations. From there, the cost is interpreted based on the template and specifics created by you. Finally, a detailed total cost of all features at a per unit cost is displayed. 

Customizing Cost

As said above, everything is customizable. But what exactly does this mean? Specific options for customization with costing are listed below.

• Adjust and save the default templates to provide your own raw material types, costs, manufacturing processes, machines, tooling and other associated costs.
• Override calculated costs and material costs.
• Add discounts and markups, change quantities and add custom operations. 
• Customize direct labor rates for specific machines and processes.
• Adjust costing reports to display quote, customer and company information such as company specific manufacturing process information, including feeds, speeds and setup costs.
• Assign a custom cost to the body of a multi-body part.
• Set machined part costing options to recognize removed material as volume features.
• Simplify the cost estimate to minimize template dependency.

Missing Template

Every design will be different with this kind of customization. What happens when the template doesn’t know the information needed? It is possible the exact tools or material thickness needed for a part you’re designing is not available. In these cases, the costing tool makes an educated estimate to give you an idea of what this part will still cost you. Using the nearest tool or material thickness already existing in the template will allow it to make this approximation. You will be notified this is not an exact value but an estimate through a warning symbol displayed either in the Costing Manager or Task Pane. 

Overall, SOLIDWORKS Costing allows you to create customized quotes and determine the best manufacturing methods for your designs in SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD. This helps you run a more efficient and cost-effective business, while also allowing you to focus on what’s important: design functionality and profitability.