Skip to content

Customer Discovery Use Cases

Status: Customer evidence Validation status: Customer-described use cases from calls; artifact examples, budget owner, and paid pilot still unconfirmed

This page captures the July 2026 ERP/drawing use-case material from customer and expert calls. It should be read as evidence that the pivot is broader than a pure drawing-review wedge: customers are pulling toward engineering data readiness across CAD, PLM, ERP, drawings, requirements, DFM, and reuse.

The account-specific signals are split into dedicated pages for Volocopter, Bauer Kompressoren, Theegarten, Avilus, Rohde & Schwarz, and Deutsche Aircraft. Read those pages when you need concrete workflows rather than the cross-account summary here.

What Changed

The earlier pivot thesis framed Release Readiness as the first wedge. The call outputs support that wedge, but they also sharpen the underlying problem:

Engineering teams do not only need "drawing checks." They need help making engineering data usable across CAD, PLM, ERP, requirements, manufacturing, and historical design memory.

Release Readiness remains a strong packaging of the pain, especially for drawing completeness and release cycles. But the strongest buying language may differ by customer:

  • Engineering Master Data Assistant for CAD/ERP metadata and Stammdatenpflege.
  • Engineering Search + PLM Intelligence for similar designs, parts, suppliers, and decisions.
  • Drawing Standards / Completeness Checker for release-cycle reduction.
  • Requirements-Driven Review for guideline and compliance checks.
  • Stress Input Readiness for load provenance, stress manuals, and secure analysis knowledge retrieval.
  • Context-Aware DFM for machine park, material, quantity, and process constraints.

Evidence Snapshot

Source Evidence level Primary pain Product implication
Volocopter / Vinicius customer-described NX drawing setup varies by engineer; layer/dimension/reference-set standards need enforcement drawing standards checker
Volocopter / Vinicius + Aaron customer-described PLM search is text-heavy; engineers cannot search by real geometry/dimensions or across ERP geometry/dimension part search
Rohde & Schwarz / Robin customer-described design reviews are functional, but requirements and guideline checks are missing requirements-driven review
Bauer Kompressoren / Wolf Goetze customer-described senior engineers map unstructured customer requests to prior custom designs from memory design reuse and decision memory
Avilus / Franz signal customer-described drawings should be checked against company standard; notes mention missing dimensions, missing surfaces, missing material, sheet metal, composites, and Teamcenter drawing standards and completeness checker
Deutsche Aircraft / Jose V. C. customer-described stress engineers spend most time gathering inputs; wrong loads can be used when source reports are lost stress input readiness and load provenance
Deutsche Aircraft / Evgeny customer-described CATIA/3DEXPERIENCE drawings loop through manual completeness checks before SAP release; SAP is ERP; AI must stay human-in-the-loop drawing completeness and release support
Ulrich customer-described DFM must account for actual machine park and quantity, not generic manufacturability rules context-aware DFM and costing
Dennis Schmitz customer-reacted design review should include material, AM orientation, CO2, rendering, and part-level feedback material/process-aware review
Theegarten / Marcel signal, plus Bauer fit customer-mentioned, needs confirmation ERP/CAD metadata and engineering master data maintenance are likely painful Engineering Master Data Assistant

Priority Clusters

Priority Cluster Why it matters First proof
P0 Engineering Master Data Assistant Boring, budget-adjacent, easier than full drawing automation, and tied to ERP/CAD metadata pain walk through one new-part creation and measure manual fields/time
P0 Drawing Completeness / Release Support Directly matches the Release Readiness wedge and Deutsche Aircraft / Evgeny's ranked list run one drawing completeness checklist on CATIA/SAP-style release artifacts
P0 Design Reuse for Custom-to-Order Bauer signal points to senior-engineer memory as bottleneck parse one customer request and retrieve/adapt prior designs
P1 Drawing Standards / Teamcenter Completeness Avilus signal is concrete and artifact-friendly validate one drawing against company standard and Teamcenter package metadata
P1 Drawing Setup Standards Volocopter signal is specific and automatable validate one NX layer/dimension/reference-set matrix
P1 Requirements-Driven Review Strong review-value story, but needs customer requirement data check one material/area/environment guideline against an artifact
P1 Stress Analysis Input Readiness Deutsche Aircraft signal is concrete and high-consequence, but may be a separate stress/tools buyer prove one wrong-load or stale-source finding on a sanitized stress package
P1 Machine-Aware DFM and Costing Valuable because it makes DFM shop-floor-specific encode one machine-park constraint and one quantity-sensitive cost rule
P1 Material / CO2 / Process Review Expands review beyond geometry calculate weight and CO2 from volume, density, route, and scrap factor
P2 CAE / CAD-to-Mesh Pipeline Credible adjacent opportunity, but likely different buyer and proof loop define a Fraunhofer project proposal rather than first product wedge

Use Case: Engineering Master Data Assistant

Evidence status: customer-mentioned; next-call confirmation required

The Theegarten/Marcel signal around ERP and CAD metadata points to a very common industrial pain: engineers and master-data owners maintain part, material, classification, supplier, and lifecycle data across CAD, PLM, and ERP. In German contexts this often shows up as Stammdatenpflege, Materialstammpflege, Artikelstammdaten, Sachmerkmalleisten, or Klassifizierung.

Likely workflow:

  1. Engineer creates or changes a CAD part.
  2. CAD/PDM has geometry, drawing, material, weight, and assembly context.
  3. ERP requires many additional fields before the part can be ordered, stocked, costed, or manufactured.
  4. Someone manually fills or copies fields from similar parts.
  5. Errors or blanks create downstream cleanup.

RapidDraft could propose ERP/CAD metadata using company history:

Input Suggested output
part name, CAD geometry, assembly context standardized description, keywords, part class, function
BOM and similar historical parts material group, commodity code, procurement type, make/buy flag
supplier and purchase history preferred supplier, purchasing category, lead-time hints
existing standards and templates lifecycle state, spare-part flag, product family, required fields

First call question:

Walk me through the last time a new part was created. Which systems were touched, which fields had to be filled manually, who filled them, and roughly how many minutes were spent per part?

Use Case: Engineering Search + PLM Intelligence

Evidence status: customer-described

Bauer and Volocopter point to related search problems:

  • engineers need to find previous designs, assemblies, drawings, BOMs, suppliers, purchase history, and decisions quickly
  • search by text metadata alone is too weak for geometry/dimension-driven reuse
  • senior engineers often know what previous solution fits, while juniors do not

RapidDraft could act as a search and reuse layer across CAD, PLM, ERP, and documents. The first useful version should retrieve evidence, not invent answers.

First demo shape:

  1. Input a customer request, part dimensions, or part description.
  2. Retrieve similar previous designs/parts and their drawings/BOMs.
  3. Show why each match is relevant.
  4. Surface reusable decisions, suppliers, and known constraints.

Use Case: Drawing Completeness And Standards

Evidence status: customer-described

Volocopter and Deutsche Aircraft / Evgeny both point to drawing checks, but at different layers:

  • Volocopter: NX drawing setup standards, layers, dimensions, reference sets, Check-Mate / Volohammer-style validation.
  • Deutsche Aircraft / Evgeny: CATIA V5 / 3DEXPERIENCE drawings and SAP release loops, with manufacturing information completeness as the top ranked use case.

This validates the Release Readiness wedge more directly than the broader engineering search use cases.

First demo shape:

  1. Load one drawing plus a standards/checklist matrix.
  2. Identify missing or nonconforming setup/manufacturing fields.
  3. Present findings as human-approved support, not autonomous release authority.
  4. Measure reduction in manual check cycles.

Use Case: Requirements-Driven Review

Evidence status: customer-described

Rohde & Schwarz describes a gap between functional design review and requirement/guideline review. Examples include material usage by area, environmental qualification level, component-purpose questions, and checks through electrical diagrams that would otherwise require simulation tooling.

This belongs in the same family as Release Readiness, but the input source is requirements and guidelines rather than only drawings/BOMs.

First demo shape:

  1. Ingest one requirement or guideline.
  2. Link it to one artifact or component group.
  3. Show a traceable compliance finding.
  4. Keep the user in control of the decision.

Use Case: Stress Analysis Input Readiness

Evidence status: customer-described

Deutsche Aircraft now has two evidence lanes. Jose V. C. points to a stress-engineering variant of Engineering Data Readiness: loads, materials, geometry, boundary conditions, requirements, manuals, and methodology all need to be found and trusted before the analysis itself. Evgeny points to configuration and release readiness: CATIA V5 / 3DEXPERIENCE drawings, SAP ERP, CAD metadata to BOM, full-3D source of truth, and human-approved drawing checks.

The most concrete failure story is load provenance: a report with correct CAE loads was lost, an analysis used wrong loads, and the correct report was found later.

First demo shape:

  1. Ingest one sanitized stress package with load source documents.
  2. Extract the load cases and cited source/revision.
  3. Search the approved corpus for conflicting or newer load evidence.
  4. Produce a load-provenance and missing-input report with citations.
  5. Keep the output as a reviewer aid, not an automated stress approval.

Configuration/release demo shape:

  1. Ingest one CATIA V5 or 3DEXPERIENCE drawing plus Evgeny's completeness checklist.
  2. Check required manufacturing information.
  3. Compare drawing/CAD metadata to BOM/SAP-relevant fields.
  4. Produce a human-approved release-readiness report.
  5. Avoid design amendments and frame findings as unqualified review support.

Use Case: Context-Aware DFM

Evidence status: customer-described

Ulrich and Dennis both show that generic DFM is not enough. Customers want checks that account for real machines, quantities, materials, additive orientation, scrap, and process route.

Examples:

  • trapped-powder additive geometry
  • machine-park limits such as missing y-axis on a double-spindle lathe
  • one-off versus series-production cost logic
  • material density and predimensioning
  • support-structure minimization for additive manufacturing
  • CO2 footprint using net/gross weight and manufacturing route

This is highly relevant to RapidDraft's DFM direction, but it may be a separate proof loop from ERP/drawing release readiness.

Use Case: CAE / CAD-To-Mesh Pipeline

Evidence status: customer-described / partnership signal

Fraunhofer's input points to simulation preprocessing and CAD-to-mesh transfer rather than the first ERP/drawing wedge. It matters because it reinforces the broader pattern: design, simulation, and manufacturing experts work in separate domains, and the value is often in translating intent across those domains.

Treat this as an adjacent partnership path unless the same buyer pulls it into Release Readiness.

Next Actions

  • Confirm the Theegarten/Bauer ERP/CAD metadata workflow with a real part-creation walkthrough.
  • Convert Deutsche Aircraft / Evgeny's ranked drawing-completeness use case into a demo outline.
  • Ask Volocopter for one concrete NX drawing setup matrix, one validator output, and one bolt/screw search example with expected hits.
  • Ask Bauer for one anonymized custom customer request and the previous design it maps to.
  • Ask Theegarten for one new-part creation walkthrough if master-data pain is still active.
  • Ask Avilus for one drawing standard, one sheet-metal drawing, and one Teamcenter package/export.
  • Ask Rohde & Schwarz for one requirement/guideline that is currently missed in functional review.
  • Ask Deutsche Aircraft / Jose for one sanitized wrong-load or stale-load-source example, plus the approved deployment boundary for stress documents.
  • Ask Deutsche Aircraft / Evgeny for one CATIA/3DEXPERIENCE drawing checklist, one SAP/BOM metadata export, and one repeated-check-cycle example.
  • Keep CAE/Fraunhofer as a project proposal path, not the first commercial wedge unless the buyer pull changes.

Open Questions

  • Is "Release Readiness" still the buyer-facing name, or should the first product be framed as Engineering Master Data / Engineering Search / Drawing Completeness depending on account?
  • Who owns budget for ERP/CAD metadata cleanup: engineering, PLM, ERP/master data, manufacturing engineering, or operations?
  • Which use case produces the fastest artifact-backed demo?

Sources