Case studies · 2 Oct 2026 · By Stefano B.

Two steel assemblies: 160 hours of drafting down to 104

Two welded assemblies, 344 bodies, from STEP to cutting drawings, booklets and nesting. 35% less time, every part checked by software.

Two welded steel assemblies from the same project. Customer names are removed. All numbers are measured on the delivered files.

Result

	Manual drafting	With StepToCut
Total time, both assemblies	160 h	104 h
Saving		56 h (35%)

Manual time is the designer's figure for the same scope done by hand.

The two jobs

	Assembly A	Assembly B
Bodies in the STEP	200	144
Cutting drawings delivered	139 (from 198 parts)	127 (117 generated, 10 kept as drawn)
Parts with bevels	59	29
Booklet	150 cells on 31 sheets	151 cells on 28 sheets
Parts for two assemblies	398	288
Nesting	372 parts on 12 sheets	274 parts on 17 sheets

Sheets are 12 × 2.5 m. Assembly B arrived with one plate drawn by hand in place of 29 bodies, so its numbering had gaps; the 10 hand-made drawings were kept untouched.

Where the time went

Reading the model: all 200 bodies of assembly A scanned in 13 minutes: type, thickness from the geometry, material.
Drawings: 198 drawings generated in under 9 minutes, then merged to 139 after identical parts were grouped.
Checks: the time saved on drafting went into checking. Every drawing, booklet cell and nested part is measured against the 3D model.

What the checks caught

20 extra parts in one booklet revision, caught by the quantity count and fixed in the next.
23 drawings where a dimension sat on top of the part, moved before delivery.
10 thicknesses on assembly B that disagreed with the dimensions, corrected.
7 mirrored parts the customer needed that were missing from the parts register.