A clean estimate with a plain-English summary, a line-item table, what's not included, and how to approve.
A transformer manufacturer cut from 15 staff to 3 and used Claude to turn 6 years of job cards into a quoting engine
Quotes that took him an hour per 10 now come out with datasheets in about 15 minutes.
What they did
u/Adarsh_Ajith, second-generation owner of an electrical transformer manufacturer, had to downsize from 15 people to 3 and was doing admin, purchasing, sales and most of the design himself. He ran 6 years of handwritten job cards through Claude over 10-15 sessions to pull out and check the data, then built his own design and quoting tool.
How it went
He reports the tool's designs match his engineer's past work over 90% of the time, two weeks into development. A non-technical salesperson can now enter client needs and get a datasheet, drawings and a quote. That took him about an hour per 10 quotes before, and now takes 15 minutes, or 7 for repeat clients.
Worth knowing
The gold was his own old paperwork. Most shops have years of past quotes and invoices sitting in boxes or folders. Getting them into a spreadsheet is the first step to faster, more consistent quotes, even without building software.
Try it yourself
Want help getting this working? Rise Systems in Oconomowoc sets these up.
Source: Reddit r/ClaudeAI · July 2026
AI is weakest reading dense drawings as images. Pull out the notes and schedules as text first.
It got there only because he gave it every variable. Others report about 70% accuracy on AI takeoffs.
A skeptic's view: entering everything into the AI is the same work as writing the quote.
One uses an estimating tool with built-in AI takeoff that saves him hours, but warns never to replace estimator instincts.