CAD pipeline overview
The 8-stage pipeline from concept brief to manufacturing-ready STL.
Overview
Katura's CAD pipeline takes a piece of jewelry from concept brief to manufacturing-ready STL — with every revision, every cost input, and every client approval tracked in one place. It is built for studios that hand-finish but think digitally: Matrix, Rhino, ZBrush, and Blender artists collaborating with shop-floor casters, setters, and finishers.
The 8 stages
- Brief — capture the customer ask in
/admin/customers/<id>/consultation: budget, deadline, references, hand sketches. - Concept render — 2–3 mood-board renders for the customer to react to. Stored under the consultation, sent via Yen or email.
- CAD draft v1 — first STL goes into
/admin/designlinked to the consultation. - Client review — proposal link with the embedded 3D viewer, comment thread, and approve / request-changes buttons.
- Revisions — each new STL is a version under the same design record. Diff and comments are preserved.
- Final STL & pricing — Katura computes weight from geometry, multiplies by the live spot price, and produces a quote.
- Approval & deposit — customer approves and pays a deposit; the design is locked.
- Manufacturing hand-off — STL + pricing + customer notes flow to the shop floor as a fulfillment task.
What this replaces
For most studios, this pipeline replaces a tangle of:
- Email threads with attached STL and JPG renders
- WhatsApp screenshots of price math
- A spreadsheet of “which version did the client approve?”
- Manual quote letters in Word
Tip
If you only adopt one piece of K99 in the first month, adopt this. The CAD pipeline pays for itself the first time you avoid manufacturing the wrong revision.