Blog The Design Looks Great, But How Much Does It Cost? Let SOLIDWORKS Costing Tell You.
The world is full of ‘what ifs’. What if I knew I could drive as fast as I wanted to work every day because I knew the police would never stop me for speeding? What if I knew moving my investments from one broker to another would guarantee me an additional 10% in earnings this year? What if I could simulate the cost of manufacturing my product before it ever left my computer?
SOLIDWORKS can’t help you with getting to work faster or growing your investments, but it has a great tool for doing ‘what if’ analyses on your sheet metal and machined parts. It’s called Costing and it’s available in the Professional or Premium SOLIDWORKS license.
You create templates with manufacturing and material information and in turn they drive the Costing tool to determine the manufacturing cost. In the templates, you can specify the material used to create the part, the manufacturing processes (such as laser cutting, bending, or milling), and the associated costs of these materials and manufacturing operations. The templates also let you create custom operations such as packaging, ERP entry, painting, or cleaning.
The tool is great for both designers and manufacturers: it helps designers make design decisions based on the cost to manufacture and it helps manufacturers create quotes for customers. Whenever you change your SOLIDWORKS design, you can see the new, updated cost immediately, along with a detailed cost breakdown. Additionally, you can generate automatic cost reports.
‘What if’ scenarios are important to both Designers and Manufacturers because making smart decisions about costs means retaining a robust design while maximizing profits. Changing your SOLIDWORKS models by removing features, changing materials and using different manufacturing processes gives insight into the cost of the design before it is actually built – saving you time and money. For the manufacturer, the Costing tool gives you an accurate, repeatable system that can adapt to changes in material or labor costs.
Set yourself apart from your competition by utilizing Costing to produce the lowest cost design that maintains your design intent for your sheet metal, machined, and multibody parts. See the following link to get more detailed information and get started.