How much does jewellery CAD design cost to outsource?

If you are quoting a bespoke commission for a customer, you need the CAD cost before you can price the job. The awkward part is that a plain wedding band and a hand-engraved cocktail ring are not the same piece of work, so no supplier can give you one number that covers both.

What can be set out is the structure of the cost: which decisions add modelling hours, which add none, and where jewellers regularly spend more than the job required. Every category on this site publishes a starting price, and the quotation you receive is a single fixed figure for the whole project rather than an hourly rate.

What actually moves the price

Almost all of it comes down to modelling hours, and modelling hours come down to geometry and risk.

• Stone count. One centre stone is one seat. A halo with pavé shoulders can be sixty, and each one has to be placed, checked for metal thickness between seats, and made settable by an actual setter rather than only on screen.
• Setting style. Prong and bezel work is fast and predictable. Micro-pavé, channel and cut-down settings are slow, because the spacing decides whether your setter can finish the piece without breaking through.
• Organic versus geometric form. Bands, signets and tension settings are largely parametric and quick. Vines, florals, figurative work and anything sculpted is modelled by hand and priced accordingly.
• Brief quality. Clear references plus real measurements is a short job. A verbal description of something the customer saw once is a long one, because the first model becomes a proposal rather than an execution.
• Deliverables. A production STL is the baseline. A STEP file for a manufacturer who will edit the geometry, presentation renders for the customer, or a technical drawing are each additional work.
• Turnaround. Standard scheduling costs less than a job that has to jump the queue because your customer has a date.
• Matching sets. A ring and band quoted together cost less than the same two quoted separately, because the shared geometry is only built once.

Per-design cost versus carrying a designer

The comparison worth running is not outsourced design against nothing. It is variable cost against fixed cost.

An in-house CAD designer is a salary, software licences, hardware and management overhead that you pay in a quiet month as well as a busy one. Outsourced design is a line item that only exists when there is a job, and it can be passed to the customer inside the piece price. Below roughly one design a working day, the fixed-cost model is usually carrying idle capacity. Above it, in-house starts to win. Most independent retailers are a long way below that line.

Where jewellers lose margin

In our experience the overspend is rarely in the modelling. It is in the round trips.

• Quoting the customer before you know the design cost. If you have committed to a price and the piece turns out to need forty pavé seats, the difference comes out of your margin rather than theirs.
• Passing on a vague brief. A nominal carat weight is not a measurement. Two stones at the same weight can differ enough to make a bezel seat wrong, and a wrong seat is a remodel.
• Scope changes after approval. Refining details inside an agreed design is normal and included. Turning an approved ring into a pendant is a new project, because almost none of the geometry survives.
• Ordering formats nobody uses. If your caster only takes an STL, a STEP file and a render pack are money spent on files that sit in a folder.

Protecting the margin on a bespoke job

The jewellers who make bespoke pay reliably do the same few things. They take the brief properly at the counter, get the design quoted before they quote the customer, build the design fee into the piece price rather than showing it as a separate line, and get the render signed off before anything is cast.

That last one matters more than the design fee itself. A customer who approves a render has agreed to the piece. A customer who sees the finished ring for the first time at collection has not.

Getting a firm number quickly

The fastest quotations come from briefs that answer the questions we would otherwise have to ask:

• The category, and two or three reference images with a note on what to keep and what to change.
• Finger or wrist size, and the real millimetre dimensions of any stone the customer already owns.
• Metal and finish, since these set minimum wall thicknesses and prong strength.
• Who is casting, and which formats and resolution they expect.
• The customer's date, if there is one.

That is normally enough for a fixed price and a realistic delivery estimate in one pass. Quotations are free and there is no obligation until you approve one, so it costs nothing to find out the number before you commit to your customer.