Uretyco quotes start with a CAD file. Most customers are not curious about what happens between the upload and the price — until something looks off. Knowing what we extract makes the platform feel less magical and more transparent.
Metrics extracted from your file
| Metric | What it tells us |
|---|---|
| Bounding box | Stock size, machine fit, packaging volume |
| Volume | Material cost |
| Surface area | Finishing time, packaging surface |
| Hole count + depths | Drilling and tapping setups |
| Smallest internal radius | Cutter selection or EDM trigger |
| Pocket aspect ratio | Tool reach, fixturing complexity |
| Thread features | Tap vs threadmill, insert recommendations |
| Wall thickness map | Thin-wall warnings, vibration risk |
| Undercut detection | Multi-axis vs multi-setup tradeoff |
| Faces / surfaces count | Print pre-processing and slicing time |
What 'good geometry' looks like to the engine
Watertight, manifold, simple. STEP AP214 or AP242 with curve and surface tolerances tighter than 0.01 mm. STL with no inverted normals. 3MF with explicit material and unit data. Anything outside these defaults can cause the engine to fall back to safer (more expensive) assumptions.
What trips the engine up
- Multi-body STEPs without a clear primary part.
- STL files with degenerate triangles or open edges.
- Drawings with implicit tolerances on critical features.
- Native CAD formats (CATPART, SLDPRT) older than the version we support.
When in doubt, export a STEP. It is widely supported by the suppliers and removes ambiguity from the analysis. Native CAD is fine but adds a small conversion delay.
How extraction feeds the quote
The metrics feed both the cost model and the DFM agent. The cost model uses them as inputs to its machine-time estimator. The DFM agent uses them to surface concerns like 'this corner radius is sharper than any standard cutter; consider EDM or relax the radius'.
What happens to your geometry
Topology analysis runs in our infrastructure with strict access controls. The CAD file itself is encrypted at rest and never used to train models without your consent. Suppliers see scoped versions of files only after you order, under NDA. Read the data privacy article for the full picture.
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