Every manufacturer wants to deliver the perfect, tailor-made solution to meet each customer’s unique needs. Yet, the process of designing from scratch—repeatedly—can quickly wear down even the most efficient engineering teams. As soon as the sales team closes a deal requiring a fresh configuration, that means hours (or days) of manual, ground-up redesign in CAD software. It’s a frustrating cycle: responding to new design requests, reworking 3D models, and making sure that every specification is correct.
Where speed and customization can make or break a deal, the real challenge isn’t just about drafting new products. It’s about eliminating repetitive tasks and giving engineering and sales a more agile way to work together.
When Every Specification is New… or Is It?
Picture this scenario: Sales finalizes a contract, but the customer wants a slight modification to a standard product—a different size, an extra component, or a novel feature. Your engineering team jumps into your Autodesk Inventor, ready to modify existing files. But a few hours in, you realize your existing model is missing key configuration options. Now you’re rebuilding or heavily modifying geometry from the ground up.
Even if you have a design library of components, manual changes can still be time-consuming. Mistakes happen when juggling multiple parameters across different assemblies. Each iteration also requires generating up-to-date quotes, rendering accurate 3D visualizations, and ensuring bill-of-materials (BOM) accuracy. All this back-and-forth is exhausting and prone to errors.
Shifting Away from the Ground-Up Mentality
Instead of treating every new project as a blank slate, more and more manufacturers are adopting advanced product configuration as part of Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) solutions. CPQ is an important tool that goes beyond mere quoting—focusing on the entire product configuration process. The “magic” behind CPQ is its ability to capture and enforce design rules, letting sales teams collaborate in real-time with engineering.
By capturing your design constraints (e.g., maximum length, widths, materials, or performance specs) and linking them to an intuitive product configurator like Tacton CPQ, you can automatically generate a valid configuration each time. The result is a standard starting point—one that doesn’t need to be reinvented for every project.
But CPQ cannot and should not operate on an island. The ability to integrate with CAD, ERP, CRM, and other key systems is where the real power is unlocked.
Integrating Product Configuration Directly into Inventor
A real breakthrough comes when Tacton CPQ hooks directly into Autodesk Inventor. Engineers no longer have to manually rebuild models; instead, they can push a button and watch as a ready-to-manipulate 3D model is generated based on the customer’s chosen specifications. This short-circuits the usual handoff cycle:
- Sales & Customer Collaboration: A salesperson or even the customer themselves specifies product options in a web-based configurator.
- Rule-Based Validation: Tacton CPQ checks each selection against engineering rules, guaranteeing a feasible design.
- CAD File Generation: Once approved, a single button updates an Inventor model with the chosen parameters—automatically resizing, adding, or removing parts.
- Engineering Refinement: Engineers open the newly configured Inventor file to validate, make final tweaks, and finalize the design.
With this workflow, hours of repetitive modeling can shrink to minutes. Even more important, it builds confidence among both sales and engineering. When the customer’s sign-off is required, 3D previews and prompt pricing updates keep everyone aligned on what will actually be built.
See it at work
This short video demonstrates the ability to work dynamically with advanced configuration of models within Inventor.
Empowering Sales, Reducing Engineering Bottlenecks
An overlooked benefit in implementing CPQ is the shift in responsibility. Before, sales would rely heavily on engineering to confirm feasibility and pricing. Now, the CPQ handles much of that logic upfront. That means:
- Sales Gains Confidence: They’re presenting realistic options that the engineering team can actually deliver.
- Engineering Saves Time: They receive an Inventor model that’s already 80-90% of the way there, rather than a rough concept that needs rework.
- Fewer Mistakes: Automatic BOM and parameter updates reduce room for error.
Faster Turnaround: Customers get an accurate quote and 3D representation sooner, accelerating the entire sales cycle.
Looking Ahead
Manufacturers are constantly seeking ways to improve product customization while keeping costs under control. By integrating CPQ with CAD software like Inventor, you are effectively bypassing many of the repetitive design steps that once slowed you down. Instead, you’re giving sales the tools to produce valid configurations instantly and handing engineering a near-complete model—ready for final touches and production.
The focus is no longer on rewriting or reshaping every design from the ground up, but on enhancing core product value. For many companies, this shift has been transformative: reducing lead times, improving accuracy, and freeing engineers to work on true innovation rather than repetitive tasks.
Implementing Tacton CPQ and connecting it with Inventor might feel like a major operational step, but the payoff is immediate: a streamlined, intelligent approach that ensures the next project starts from a valid, preconfigured model—no guesswork, no unnecessary duplication, and no more ground-up design.
About This Approach
KETIV has been helping manufacturers integrate Tacton CPQ with CAD, ERP, and PDM, ensuring that product and organization data, configuration rules, and CAD models are in lockstep. By eliminating manual guesswork and standardizing model creation, teams see real improvements in efficiency and accuracy. It’s not about shortcuts—it’s about creating a scalable process that handles variability without burying engineers in extra hours of CAD work.
The era of repetitive design tasks is coming to a close. As technology continues to evolve, embracing tools like Tacton CPQ within Inventor is quickly becoming a necessity for any manufacturer aiming to provide custom yet profitable offerings at scale.