A prospective customer in HVAC duct fabrication believes Trimble FabShop may be 'overkill' for their needs, as they only manufacture and do not require the software's heavy focus on design.

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    "summary": "A prospective customer in HVAC duct fabrication believes Trimble FabShop may be 'overkill' for their needs, as they only manufacture and do not require the software's heavy focus on design.",
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    "comments": [
      {
        "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/manufacturing/comments/1w9i7mq/comment/p8apxb8/",
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        "author": "Odd-Employee1050",
        "excerpt": "sounds like you need a nesting engine with a lightweight MRP wrapper, not a full BIM-to-fab suite. the design modules in trimble are 90% of the cost and you'd be paying for tools you'll never click\n\n look into a standalone nesting software that takes DXF inputs, then bolt on something like cetec or statii for the order-to-invoice flow with QB sync. way cheaper and the owner will get his saturdays",
        "posted_at": "2026-09-07T05:10:47.000Z",
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        "author": "blud_13",
        "excerpt": "u/Odd-Employee1050 is right and the standalone you want is probably CAMduct. Its the duct half of the Autodesk Fabrication line and you can buy it without CADmep or ESTmep, so you skip the design modules you already said you don't need. It develops the flat patterns from the duct sizes, nests them, and ships post processors for plasma tables. https://www.autodesk.com/products/fabrication/overview",
        "posted_at": "2026-09-07T14:28:28.000Z",
        "author_url": "https://www.reddit.com/user/blud_13/"
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        "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/manufacturing/comments/1w9i7mq/comment/p8d8ldi/",
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        "author": "silver__robot",
        "excerpt": "You've got two jobs runnig through one person right now. Building the cut list from a customer order is one job. Turning a finished job into an invoice is a separate job. Both currently live in your owner's head, on paper.\n\n Before moving forward with a software, figure out which one costs you the most time. And which one is riskier when it goes wrong. A bad cut list wastes material. A late invoic",
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        "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/manufacturing/comments/1w9i7mq/comment/p8dogut/",
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        "author": "Deep_Ladder_4679",
        "excerpt": "That sounds like the real pain is the handoff, not the duct design itself, the owner is still turning every customer order into a work order and then re-entering it for invoicing. Which part is costing you more time right now like creating the cut layout or handling the paper-to-invoice work?",
        "posted_at": "2026-09-07T16:31:29.000Z",
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    "evidence": [
      "[post] Both seem to have a heavy focus on designing layout and then developing the profile to be cut. I'm thinking if that would be an overkill for our shop.",
      "[comment u/Odd-Employee1050] sounds like you need a nesting engine with a lightweight MRP wrapper, not a full BIM-to-fab suite. the design modules in trimble are 90% of the cost and you'd be paying for tools you'll never click"
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    "post_date": "2026-09-07T04:41:43.000Z",
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    "post_text": "In our current sheet metal fab shop, we do mostly HVAC ducts. We don't design, we just manufacture. We are told the duct sizes and the owner (who is knowledgeable) develops the work order to cut in our plasma cutter. It was fine when we were small but are growing and it takes a lot of time for the owner to create it. Also we use paper trail, so customer orders are manually written in paper, once it is completed, owner has to manually create invoice from each. Takes a lot of time.\n\nWe want to automate both these processes i.e. creating work orders and then creating invoices from work order. I'm sure there are some software that will generate the profiles and also optimize the sheet metal cutting. Ideally, we are looking for something that can manage the workflow from customer order → work order plus integrate with QB to help in delivery (develop pick list) and invoicing.\n\nGoogle suggestion seems to be Trimble FabShop, or CAMduct. Both seem to have a heavy focus on designing layout and then developing the profile to be cut. I'm thinking if that would be an overkill for our shop.\n\nWe have the individual pieces (rectangular vs angle) and sizes already given by our customers. We just need to convert that into profiles and optimize the layout to avoid scraps.\n\nAny feedback or suggestions will be very helpful.",
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    "post_title": "HVAC duct fabrication: what shop-floor software to use?",
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