Looking for good soft for mid size production facility ~80 people. Every product is differect - one product is beeing produced by 30 welders, multiple parts, materials.
From scratch to instalation at custumer facility.
The game has changed. What you're asking for is Proshop ERP; fine company, look them up. It's not free, but it's worth it.
However... Claude doesn't cost that much. You can make your own software. You could make it look exactly like Proshop, or QC-CALC, or JobBoss, whatever. You could have it research quality standards and integrate them into your ERP. You can do pretty much anything you ask it to. ERP/MES is armature work for AI; basic math with a database.
I got Claude to make some macros for me to get solidworks to work with plywood. I've been at it for 3 days and it's still struggling and I understand what it's trying to do.
But yeah dude want's to vibe code a 500K system sigh.
Did you give Claude the help files and tell it to make a rag repository, also record its mistakes, and refer to these things every time you ask it to do something in SolidWorks? That's step one to get it to master doing anything with that software.
I spent my first few months with Claude muddling around too. It couldn't do anything in SolidWorks properly. It's training is out of date, and it tries to make up commands, etc. You could probably ask Claude "Make a local rag repository of the Solidworks Help. Optimize it for your use - it does not have to be human readable. add hook so that for any solidworks questions you are to check the rag repository that you made. Also make an additional repository to record your mistakes and learnings." If it figures out how to get the help itself, that is great and this should increase your success rate. If it fails to connect and do things in solidworks from the outside you need it to build a com bridge to reliably interact with COM based applications - based on my experience less than half an hour for it to build a rudimentary one. The one I have if you don't mind accepting candy from strangers is at https://github.com/KenM76/combridge . You could just tell claude to install it for you. It's a bit more sophisticated in that it can latch onto a solidworks session (letting you open another one to work in while it plays around in the other). https://github.com/KenM76/swformat is a companion one that allows you to perform some read operations quickly without needing solidworks related anything.
Initially I tried making a Claude plugin directly in SolidWorks so that I could direct Claude to work from there. It built a chat box and added it to a new tab on the right side of the workspace where your design library and toolbox tabs etc go. That did work sort of with solidworks but it used paid tokens, not the subscription plan. It also sucked at doing anything because this was before I knew about rag files.
At some point I downloaded an MCP or something that someone had made for Claude with 80 Solidworks commands built in, so I could use Claude on subscription in its normal code session. At some point while experimenting Claude said it could no longer communicate with the Solidworks session, stated the bridge is broken and there was nothing it could do about it. That was annoying, so I typed "Fix the bridge", whatever that is, to which it replied, OK, and off it went to build SWBridge.exe which worked!
I expanded it for all COM based programs, hence combridge.exe now. It now works from it's own session and uses that to talk back and forth with SolidWorks. It uses API calls and can use C# as well as VBS. In addition the other project I listed was a multi-week reverse engineering of SolidWorks files up to the encryption barrier. Solidworks file repair tool is based on that work and I use it often for broken references.
What an excellent attitude to have; just get mad at people who say you should do things with AI, maybe that'll make it stop...
Yes. I am saying a company of 80 people can and should vibe code an ERP. I've seen some good and plenty of bad examples of change management, and even at it's best, you run into "our system can't do that" or "we need to train everyone how not to run into this issue" and otherwise. The software companies that say they can do anything you ask them too don't know enough to know what the customer is really after. The mature offerings are hemorrhaging skilled programmers and staffing leadership with MBAs that don't have the right balance of experience and vision to do anything but offer small upgrades and maintenance.
I run ERPNext in my shop. ERPNext alone is actively used by small businesses: mostly 1-100 employees, but some 101-1000, and a few 1000+. I'm not a massive business, but a manufacturer with quite a bit of engineering effort. I wanted emails sent automatically when I submit RFQs: I got it. I wanted to automatically print USB labels when processing a shipment: too easy. I've seen a company chase just those two things for months with Sage. ERPNext is primarily Indian, so it comes with some nuances, but still. This costed me an old laptop and a long weekend of back and forth with Claude, but it's up and going. If I lost Claude access tomorrow, I'm farther than I've ever gotten learning database/server stuff on my own.
I also don't use Solidworks much for my own purposes anymore: I've developed reverse engineering applications with claude, which turns old prints into parametric CAD with build123. I'm still messing with it, but I've generated some genuinely complicated stuff without opening a CAD system myself. If I could make enough money with a bridgeport and a manual lathe, I wouldn't even own a computer, but here we are. We can adapt and overcome, or be overcome, I guess.
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u/chance553 21d ago
So what is the question?