Quotes from customer drawings, drafted the way your estimator builds them.

A buyer sends a drawing, sometimes a model, with quantities and a due date. Your estimator works out the bar or plate size, the machines and setups, the finish and heat treat, and the inspection, then prices every quantity. Most of that time goes into reading the print and digging up what a similar part took last time.

In the proof of concept, AI works through copies of RFQs you already quoted and drafts the worksheet in the order your estimator builds one: material, operations, outside processing, inspection, then the price at each break. Every hour figure names the past job it came from, and a line with no match stays empty.

The cost sits in the tightest callout. A dimension with no tolerance beside it takes the title block's default, and every customer's block is different, so the draft reads the block before any dimension. Then it lists what picks the machine and the inspection: the tightest tolerance and where it falls, surface finish in microinches Ra, thread classes such as 3B, position and profile callouts, and notes like edge breaks.

Finish callouts change the machining. Commercial prints often say only "clear anodize" or "black anodize", or point to the customer's own finish spec or to ASTM B580, which sorts anodic coatings into lettered types by use and minimum thickness, with Type A as the engineering hard coat. Hard coat builds up roughly half its thickness above the surface and the rest goes into the metal, so a tight bore is machined to a pre-finish size or masked, and masking is often a separate charge at the finisher. Stainless parts called out for passivation to ASTM A967 add their own send-out line, priced from your passivator's list.

Heat treat sets the order of operations. 17-4 PH bar to ASTM A564 Type 630 is often bought in Condition A, machined, then aged to a condition such as H900 or H1025, and it shrinks slightly as it ages: the Precision Machined Products Association gives about 0.0004 to 0.0006 in. per inch from Condition A to H900. So the routing has to show which features are finished after heat treat. The heat treat itself goes on the worksheet at the price your heat treater quoted, and a vendor's lot charge lands hardest on the smallest quantity break.

Hours come from jobs you ran. The draft follows your own quoting rules. ECI's page for JobBOSS² lists burden rate, labor rate, quantity breaks, setup time, run time and outside services among the values a shop can preset for quick estimates, and a quoting spreadsheet usually holds the same pieces. Setup and run hours come from a past job on a similar part, named by job number with the hours actually logged, or the line stays blank. When the print or PO asks for material certs, the material line says so and names the bar's spec: ASTM B211 covers rolled or cold-finished aluminum bar and B221 extruded bar, and both treat certification as something the buyer orders.

Your reviewer. The owner names the estimator who knows your quoting best. They hold each draft against the quote that went out, line by line, and for RFQs you won, the job's logged hours show whether the draft borrowed from the right past jobs. Include a few parts you passed on, to see whether the draft gives the reasons your estimator gave.

After a yes, each new RFQ gets a draft worksheet as it comes in, for about 30 days.

Your estimator checks, changes and prices each one, decides what to pass on, and sends every quote from your own system. The scoring table keeps running, so the live month is judged the same way the test was.