One assembly in one request.

Where it starts

A smaller machine builder has done its own engineering and needs someone to make it: frames, sheet parts, machined parts, or a complete module delivered ready to use. The request arrives as a top-level assembly in STEP, with a stack of PDFs underneath.

That assembly holds three kinds of work. Made parts that are cut, bent, welded or machined. Bought parts you purchase. And your own work: welding, fitting, finishing. Most of it happens in-house, and it all has to land in one price.

A bought part might be a bearing, a cylinder or a length of profile. It belongs in the price, but you do not make it. And the customer expects one quote for the whole, not three separate ones.

How it usually runs

Costing runs across two systems. A costing package prices the made parts; the ERP handles orders and invoices. In that package, bought parts only count if they are modelled in 3D. So you strip them out of the model, price the made parts, and add the bought parts back into the ERP by hand.

The package picks up only part of the drawing: a colour, a blasting or surface callout, or a material outside its supplier list drops out. Stock size with an allowance per side does not fit in it. Re-run an old project and you get a different number, with no trace of why. And corrections after the fact are made by hand.

What Blake prepares

In Blake an assembly is one request. Machined made parts get their own build-up: material, machining, finishing and setup, each on a line, at the machine's hourly rate.

Bought parts sit as purchase lines, priced from your own library or left open until someone enters the price. An open price stays open, never zero. Outsourced work such as powder coating or galvanising is its own line from your own library, and there too a missing price stays visibly open.

Welding and assembly sit as the assembly's own lines, with the hours as an input. The roll-up is arithmetic on the parts beneath it, so nothing is priced twice. Sheet parts are marked as sheet in the request, next to the machined parts. More on assemblies and modules and on welding and assembly.

Where people decide

The cost engineer decides the welding and assembly hours, and the price of any bought part still open. Every correction to the estimate is kept with who, when and why, and every quote version is kept.

So a price difference between two versions leaves a trail: which line, who, and for what reason. That is the point: less retyping between two systems, more time for the cost engineer's know-how.

What it comes down to

Blake does not cost sheet metal and welding today: sheet parts are marked as sheet in the request and welding and assembly go in as hours. What counts is that nothing is priced twice and that an open price stays open until someone enters it.

Today the quote goes out as a PDF, with CSV and JSON export for your own systems, so the price is built once and not retyped again.

Key points

• An assembly holds three kinds of work: made parts, bought parts and your own work.
• In Blake they sit in one request, with one roll-up that counts nothing twice.
• A bought part without a price stays open until someone enters it.
• Every estimate correction is kept with who, when and why.