Answer the enquiry yourself, on the day it lands.
You describe the part in the words the customer used. If something is missing, it asks before it runs anything. What comes back is an answer you can put in front of them, carrying the numbers it rests on and the assumptions it made.
You are answering an enquiry, and the answer decides whether you bid.
What that looks like
You write the job the way you would say it. What comes back is the answer and the work behind it. Where there is a use case you can open and run today, it is linked.
A customer gave me this part and asked whether we can injection mould it for him. Is it designed in a way that is fit for injection moulding? Tell me anything in the geometry that would cause us trouble, and where on the part it sits.
A geometry-only check in about a second, every finding carrying the place on the part it came from. It names the checks that did not run rather than staying quiet about them.
The wall measures 2 mm against the 1.2 mm you hold to, so it clears that today · take the wall down and the check turns before you reach the limit.
The geometry came back fine. How many cavities can or should I fit on my machine with 100 t clamping force and a 500 × 500 mm clamping area? Work the clamp force out from the filling pressure and tell me what you had to assume.
The measured cavity pressure turned into the clamp force the job needs, at whatever cavity count you are considering. The runner and the safety margin stay yours, and it says so.
The customer wants the wall taken down to 1.5 mm to save material. We do not go under 1.2 mm on a part like this. Check it against that limit and tell me how much of the surface would fall outside it.
The wall-thickness check against your own limits, and how much of the surface falls outside them. The limits are yours to set, not ours.
clears the limit you hold to, with room left
Put this into our quote template so I can send it this afternoon. Use the numbers you just worked out, and mark clearly which ones are results and which ones are assumptions I should sanity check.
The PowerPoint you already use, filled in with the answer, the numbers and the figures behind them.
What you can ask for
A manufacturability check from the geometry alone
Wall thickness, flow path, flow length, air traps, draft angle, mass accumulation and the rest · nine checks straight from the STL, in seconds, before anything is meshed or costed. Every one lands in a versioned report with the place on the part it came from.
A feasibility answer while the enquiry is still open
Whether the part fills, what it costs in cycle time, and how much of that is your assumption rather than the physics.
A quote deck in your own house style
Hand over one geometry and ask for something you can send. Point it at whichever PowerPoint you already use, template or not, and it comes back filled in and on brand.
Costing from the geometry
Cavity count, machine size and cost worked out from the part rather than from experience and a margin. In preparation.
None of this asks you to open a simulation tool. You describe the job in the words you already use with the customer.
Start with something real
Every use case is a worked job you can point at your own part. Take one as it stands, then say what is different about yours.