Follow every model file, print job, material spool and quote on one record.

A 3D printing company sells machine time, material and finishing. The customer sends a model file, and the price depends on volume, support structure, layer height and post-processing. Many bureaus hold all of this in email threads, slicer notes and a shared sheet that only one estimator understands. A second person covering a holiday cannot rebuild a price from it. Revisions pile up. Nobody trusts the price.

Software for this trade keeps the file revision, the quote, the build plate and the inspection result together. A scoping session follows one order from upload to dispatch. Slicer and CAD tools stay in use.

Customers upload STL or STEP files through a web form or by email. An estimator opens each model, checks it is printable and chooses a process such as FDM, SLA, SLS or metal powder bed. The quote combines print hours, material weight, support removal, finishing and a set-up charge. Rush orders and repeat parts ask for a different price every time. Nothing is standard.

The production lead nests accepted parts onto build plates and queues them across printers. Operators load spools or resin, start the build and pull parts once it ends. Finishing staff remove supports, sand, vapour smooth, dye or coat each part, and the order of those steps changes with the material, the surface the customer asked for and the batch size. Quality staff measure critical dimensions against the drawing before the box is packed. Then it ships.

Printers need nozzle changes, resin vat swaps, bed levelling and firmware care. Each has its own wear. Prototype customers send revised files weekly. The revision that was quoted is not always the one that was printed, and the operator at the printer has no way to know which of three emailed versions the customer meant.