Design Engineer
Know what the Design Engineer is, where it lives in the platform and what it costs.
The Design Engineer is Kabaido's AI CAD module for custom product sales. Each design module is a full configurator experience: a 3D viewport, a parameter schema, live rendering, price calculation, engineering drawing export and file exports. Six are built today: balustrades and handrails, soft jaws, gaskets, cut-to-size plastics, PCD saw blades and PCD profile cutters.
You do not switch them on one by one. A design module arrives with the preset that carries it, so turning on the trade you are in brings the configurator, the schemas behind it and the customer fields it needs together. See Presets overview.
| Design module | The preset that carries it |
|---|---|
| Balustrades and handrails | Balustrades and architectural metalwork |
| Soft jaws | Toolholding and workholding |
| Gaskets | Gaskets and sealing |
| Cut-to-size plastics | Cut-to-size plastics |
| PCD saw blades | Saw blades, and PCD and diamond tooling |
| PCD profile cutters | PCD and diamond tooling |
What a configurator actually is here
Not a form that emails your engineer. A configurator is an engine definition: typed parameters, derived values computed in order, rules that constrain what is buildable, and outputs that include a price, a cost and a lead time. Dimension parameters carry a canonical unit, so an input given in inches and an input given in millimetres reach the formulas as the same number, and a formula written once cannot be broken by how somebody typed a value.
That is what makes the price on the screen the same price your estimator would have reached. The rules are yours, the rates are yours, and the arithmetic is deterministic rather than inferred.
What comes out of a run
- A 3D model in the viewport, rebuilt as the parameters change.
- A priced breakdown, line by line, showing which rule produced which figure.
- An engineering drawing, generated from the same geometry rather than drawn separately.
- Manufacturing files for the shop floor.
- A saved designed product, if you keep it, which then behaves like a catalogue item the Sales Engineer can match future request lines against.
Two ways to drive it
- Manual: a person configures in the interface. Manual configuration and its exports draw no usage.
- AI-driven: a request line the platform reads as work to be made is routed to the design module that fits it, configured, priced and drawn inside the answer. There is no mode to switch into first, and any line can also be opened in the workbench by hand from the Design this line button on the line itself.
The AI route is worth understanding properly, because it is the join between the two flagship modules. A customer writes "soft jaws for a 250mm 3-jaw chuck, gripping 90mm bar, aluminium" and the Design Engineer sets the parameters a design engineer would have set, shows the result and lets you argue with it in words. What comes back is a configured product, not a description of one.
Where it lives
Open Products, then Custom. There is no page of cards to get past: the area resolves straight into the workbench on your own work, the file you had open, else the newest one in your workspace, else a fresh file on the module that suits this business. If you have no design module on at all it takes you to Presets instead, to ask what you make rather than to show you an empty screen.
Saved designed products are stored against your organisation, and the Sales Engineer matches request lines against them after the catalogue; see Working with matches in Requests. The engine behind each module is documented in Building a configurator.
Where to read next
- Building a configurator for parameters, formulas and rules.
- Stock pools and matching for configuring against what you actually hold.
- Stock modes and the machine bridge for holding real stock behind a module and letting an order raise the work that makes it.
- The geometry block for how shape drives price.
- Test bench and versioning for changing a live configurator safely.
- Drawing engines and renderings for what comes out at the end.
What it costs
Included in every plan. An AI-configured result draws on your monthly usage, and a run that read geometry draws more. Plans cap saved designed products (5 Free, 250 Pro, 2,500 Ultra, 25,000 Max) and drawing and file exports a month (10, 250, 1,000 and fair use on Max). Caps enforce softly: at the cap the action explains the limit and offers the upgrade, nothing is deleted.
Any plan can request a new design module, scoped and built for a one-time POA setup fee, then usable like any of the six built today.