A price, worked out from the file.

You can guess a cost from a model’s bounding box in a fraction of a second, and it will be wrong by a wide margin on anything with overhangs, infill or supports.

Only a measured slice can be charged for. Where you see an estimate in PlateDock it is labelled as one, and it is never the number a customer is asked to pay.

The slicer reports the volume of filament a print consumes. Turning that into grams needs a density, and the generic profiles bundled with slicers report a density of zero.

So the density comes from the material you set up, which is also where the price per kilo lives. Two numbers from the same place, about the same spool.

A customer paints a model in Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer or PrusaSlicer and uploads the project. PlateDock reads the colour slots and shows them, so each one can be matched to a filament you hold.

There is no painting in the browser, and colours are never quietly flattened. If the painting cannot be read, the job comes to you for a manual answer rather than being guessed at.

Parts that will not fit on one bed are arranged across several, and the quote covers all of them. The arrangement is worked out the same way every time, so asking for the same quote twice gives the same price.

A single part too large for any of your printers is never scaled down or cut up. It is refused, with the measurement that failed, and passed to you.

Filament cost, machine rate, setup charge, minimum order, and either a markup or a target margin. Labour, electricity, failure allowance and plate preparation if you want that level of detail.

Every quote keeps the rates it was priced with. Change your prices tomorrow and last week’s order can still be explained.

Uploads go straight into private storage with a short-lived permission that covers one file and one checksum. The server re-reads every file and decides for itself what it is.