Design Engine overview
What the Design Engine covers today - product/material configuration - and what's still on the roadmap.
- Audience
- Design & engineering teams, Production teams, Implementation partners
- Permissions needed
- Product engine: read/create/update per resource
- Prerequisites
- Inventory item master set up (materials/components are shared with it)
- Environment
- Production and staging
- Product version
- Current
- Last reviewed
- Owner
- Propulsive Product Team
Before you start
- Automated cut-list optimisation and CAD-grade drawings are on the roadmap, not shipped - don't plan a production go-live around them yet.
The Design Engine is Propulsive’s foundation for parametric product configuration for cabinetry and furniture - defining what a product is made of and how it can be configured, so that later work (bills of materials, cut lists) starts from consistent, rule-checked data rather than a blank canvas each time.
What’s built and in active use
- Categories, attribute definitions, materials and components - the vocabulary that describes what you make and what it’s made from. These share the same units of measure as Inventory.
- Configuration schemas and rule sets - define how a product can be configured, and the rules that keep a configuration valid (in beta - real and usable, but still evolving).
- Design projects and configured products - start a project, configure a product against its rule set, track changes through change requests (in beta).
- Calculation runs and estimate lines - run pricing/quantity calculations against a configured product and carry the result into a sales estimate line (in beta).
- Material requirements and substitutes - roll a configured design up into what it needs to build, with substitute materials where a primary choice is unavailable (in beta).
What’s still on the roadmap
- Automated, nesting-aware cut-list (panel) optimisation.
- CAD-grade 2D drawings and coordinated 3D visualisation generated directly from the engineering model.
- Full production-package automation from a finished design straight into a shop-ready work order.
We’re telling you this directly rather than implying it’s finished: the configuration foundation is genuinely useful today for standardising how products are defined, but if your evaluation depends on automated cut lists or CAD-grade output, treat that as a roadmap conversation with us, not something to assume is ready.
Where it connects
Materials and components here are the same records Inventory tracks stock for, and the same ones Production’s bills of materials will eventually consume - one definition of a material, used from configuration through to the shop floor.