CAD Production Intelligence  ·  Currently supporting AutoCAD

You have no idea how long
that drawing actually took.

Cadigence connects to your CAD software and records every minute of real design work — by task, by drawing, by engineer. No timesheets. No self-reporting. No guessing.

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No credit card  ·  AutoCAD 2021 and above  ·  Up and running in minutes
Cadigence Plugin
TRACKING ACTIVE
JOB-0042  ·  Revision 1
Shaft Housing Assembly — Section A
Precision Parts Ltd.  ·  Mechanical
02:34:17
ACTIVE TIME TODAY
4.2h
THIS SESSION
WORK PERIODS — TODAY
09:00 ——— NOW
DATA SYNC STATUS
● Up to date
ENGINEER OUTPUT — THIS MONTH
AS
Arjun S.
218h
PM
Priya M.
164h
KD
Kiran D.
133h
94%
Tracking accuracy — verified against firm records in pilot companies
↑ vs 61% for manual timesheets
2.4×
Faster approval turnaround versus informal approval workflows
Median: 18h → 7.5h
Zero
Change required to how your engineers work day-to-day
No new habits to form
Your drawing files never leave your machines. Cadigence tracks activity, not content.
No drawing content is ever uploaded, read, or stored on our servers.
Only metadata is synced — timestamps, job IDs, and activity signals.
Who uses Cadigence

Built for any firm where engineers
produce drawings as deliverables.

If your business bills clients based on drawing output, or manages engineers who produce CAD files as part of a project, Cadigence was built for you.

MEP Engineering
HVAC, plumbing, electrical, fire suppression. High drawing volume, multiple revision cycles, tight project deadlines.
Structural & Civil Engineering
Foundation plans, structural details, site drawings. Approvals carry legal weight — every version needs a clear record.
Industrial Machinery & Manufacturing
Machine assemblies, fabrication drawings, component layouts. An unapproved change reaching the shop floor is expensive.
Architecture & AEC
Floor plans, elevations, construction documents. Multiple consultants, overlapping drawing sets, complex approval chains.
Product Design Studios
Consumer products, tooling, enclosures. Fast iteration cycles where knowing actual design hours directly informs product costing.
Electrical & Instrumentation
Panel layouts, wiring diagrams, P&IDs. Drawing accuracy is critical — a post-approval change can mean a costly site rework.
The Problem

Engineering firms are flying blind on
actual production cost.

You know what you charged the client. You don't know what it cost to produce the drawings. That gap is where profit disappears.

67%
of firms underquote on repeat drawing types because they don't have real hours to reference. They find out at billing — too late to fix.
3.1×
average revisions on rejected drawings with no structured approval process in place. Each revision cycle is rework you absorb silently.
0
firms can prove when a drawing was submitted, who approved it, what the rejection reason was, or whether the approved version is what's currently on the engineer's computer.
The hours-per-drawing problem
A manager asks: "How long did the shaft housing drawing take?" The engineer says 6 hours. The timesheet says 8. The actual working time across all sessions was 11.4 hours — including two revision rounds that no one tracked. Without accurate numbers, every future quote for a similar job is a guess.
If you can't measure it, you can't price it correctly.
The approved-drawing problem
A drawing gets approved. Three days later the engineer opens it, makes changes, and saves — without telling anyone. The approved record and the file now differ. The manufacturer builds from the wrong version. There is no record of what changed or who made the change. This is both a quality failure and a liability exposure.
One unauthorised change can cost more than months of subscription fees.
The informal approval problem
Drawing shared over email or WhatsApp. Manager says "looks good." Work begins. Client later disputes the design. You have no record of which version was approved, when it was approved, or by whom. When a project has a contractual dispute, a chat message is not evidence.
Informal approvals are a liability you carry silently.
Most Common Objection

"We already track
time in Excel."

We hear this constantly. Excel is better than nothing. But it has three fundamental limitations that make it the wrong tool for engineering production tracking — limitations that usually only become visible after a dispute with a client or a contractor.

Excel tracks what engineers say they worked, not what they actually worked
Engineers fill in hours at the end of the day or week from memory. They round, they forget revisions, they skip tasks that feel like "overhead." Cadigence records automatically from the moment work starts — every session, every drawing, without anyone filling in anything.
Excel can't tell you cost per drawing
A spreadsheet shows "12 hours on Project X." Cadigence shows "4.2 hours on the shaft housing, 3.1 hours on the pipe bracket, 4.7 hours on drawings not linked to any job." That second level tells you where time actually went and whether the job is profitable.
Excel has no control over what happens after approval
No spreadsheet can alert you when an engineer modifies an approved drawing. Cadigence detects any change to an approved drawing the moment it is saved and immediately notifies the manager — with the drawing name, who changed it, and when.
Capability
Excel / Timesheets
Cadigence
Drawing-level time tracking
Manual entry
Automatic
Excludes idle / away time
Self-reported only
Detected automatically
Revision tracking
Not structured
Auto-numbered
Approval with audit trail
Email / WhatsApp
Timestamped record
Alerts on post-approval changes
No visibility
Instant notification
Works without internet
Depends on file sync
Works fully offline
How It Works

Three steps. Your engineers
don't need to do anything differently.

Cadigence runs quietly alongside your CAD software. It detects when real work is happening and when it isn't. Your engineers open their software and design. Nothing else changes.

01
The plugin installs into AutoCAD in minutes
Your IT team or manager runs a simple one-click installer. The Cadigence panel appears inside AutoCAD — just like the standard Properties or Layer panel your engineers already use. Engineers log in once. After that, everything is automatic. No training is required.
AutoCAD 2021 and aboveNo training needed
02
Managers assign jobs. Engineers select the job they're working on.
The manager creates a job in the web portal — job number, title, engineer, deadline. The engineer sees it in their panel and selects it. From that point, Cadigence tracks time automatically: working = time counts, switched to another app or idle for too long = time pauses. When the engineer resumes, a notification reminds them to confirm the job they're picking up.
JOB-0042
Shaft Housing Assembly — Sec A
In Progress
JOB-0031
Pipe Bracket — Variant 3
Assigned
JOB-0039
Conveyor Frame — Side Panel
Approved ✓
03
Everything syncs to the portal. Managers see real data, not estimates.
All tracked time syncs to the web portal automatically at regular intervals. If the engineer's machine loses internet, Cadigence continues tracking locally and syncs everything as soon as the connection returns — nothing is lost. Managers see live progress across all engineers and all jobs, and receive alerts the moment anything needs attention.
Works offlineAuto-syncNothing is ever lost
What changes

What you will know
after 30 days.

Most firms see a meaningful shift in how they price, plan, and manage work within the first month. Not because anything changed in how they work — but because for the first time, they have accurate numbers to work from.

01
Your actual cost per drawing type
Not what you estimated — what it actually took. Use this to quote the next similar job with confidence instead of guessing and hoping.
02
Which projects are consuming more than they should
See where hours are going relative to what was scoped. Catch overruns while there is still time to act — not after the invoice has gone out.
03
Whether your team's workload is balanced
See how work is distributed across your team. Identify who is stretched thin and which projects are consuming a disproportionate share of your best people's time.
04
How many revision cycles your approvals are averaging
A drawing that goes through four rounds of revision before approval is a process problem, not a people problem. Knowing the number is the first step to fixing it.
From firms running Cadigence for 90+ days
★★★★★
We had a billing dispute where the client claimed a drawing took far less time than we charged. Cadigence showed the exact working sessions, including two revision rounds caused by their own spec changes. We recovered the full amount without escalating.
RM
Rahul Mehta
Director, MEP Solutions Pvt. Ltd. · 22 engineers
★★★★★
An engineer modified an approved structural drawing after sign-off. Cadigence flagged it within minutes. We caught it before the fabrication team started work. Without that alert, we would have built from the wrong version and faced the consequences on site.
SA
Sunita Agarwal
Project Manager, Infratech Designs · 31 engineers
★★★★★
After three months I could see that our most experienced engineer was spending 40% of his time on a project that was only billing 20% of his daily rate. We used that data to renegotiate the contract. The subscription paid for itself in the first month.
KP
Kiran Patil
Principal, ARC Engineers LLP · 14 engineers

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No workflow changes for engineers  ·  Works fully offline  ·  India-based support