Fabrication drawings

What it is

A fabrication drawing is a customer-facing technical spec drawing for a custom job — bent panels (fridge covers, sign returns, splash backs), machine guards, enclosures/boxes, display cases, and flat cut-to-size parts. It shows the part with dimensions, so the customer and the factory agree on exactly what’s being made.

There are two ways one gets made:

Automated (cad-worker) — for standard shapes, the drawing is generated from dimensions + material + quantity and comes back as a DXF, PDF and SVG.
Hand-built — for unusual geometry, the drawing is built by hand and rendered to a PDF.

The one thing to always clarify first

⚠️ External size vs flat blank

Ask whether the customer’s dimensions are the external (finished) size after bending, or the flat blank (the flat sheet before it’s folded). This changes the material cut size — external dimensions need bend allowances taken off. Getting this wrong means the wrong cut size.

How to get a drawing made

Clarify the geometry and the external-vs-flat-blank question above.
Pick the approach — a standard cad-worker template if the shape matches one (flat sheet, box/enclosure, bent panel, rod, tank panels), otherwise a hand-built drawing.
Generate the drawing to standard (mm dimensions, a title block; bent parts get a front view and a cross-section view).
Attach it to the Pipedrive deal — the cad-worker can attach the PDF + DXF to the deal automatically; a hand-built PDF is attached manually.

📝 Who actually runs this

Fabrication drawings are produced by the cad-worker / an operator (often via Claude), not a self-serve dashboard screen.

TODO: confirm whether non-technical staff self-serve this or route it to whoever runs the cad-worker.

If you’re quoting alongside the drawing

Pull rates from the PIM. Present the quote consolidated by part type — e.g. “Bent acrylic panel 600×400mm” — and show ex-GST, GST, and the inc-GST total.

⚠️ Never itemise the process steps to the customer

Quote by the finished part, not by each step (cut, bend, polish…). Consolidate.

Gotchas

External vs flat-blank is the critical clarification (see above).
Routing vs milling: a router does a 2D perimeter cut from flat sheet; CNC milling removes material from solid plate (for thick stock that can’t be bent). Each milling setup adds cost.
Check the PDF page count after rendering — multi-page drawings can bleed if page breaks aren’t right.
Treat the rate table as indicative — confirm current rates before quoting.

Who to tell if it breaks

Tell Daniel or flag in #whats-new.

Derived from: the fabrication-drawings skill. If this looks wrong, the source changed — update the source and re-generate, don’t just patch this page. See also Quote a tank and Quote a sign.