You know the drill. A client wants a quote for a 12-unit kitchen with an island. You open the Excel file you've been nursing for three years — the one with 14 tabs, nested formulas, and a VLOOKUP that breaks every time you add a new material. You start entering dimensions by hand. Edge banding calculations. Hardware counts. Markup. Installation. Two and a half hours later, you have a number. Then you open Word, paste in some renders from last time, manually build a pricing table, and hope you didn't forget the soft-close drawer slides.
This is how most kitchen manufacturers still work. Not because they want to — because nothing better exists in their price range. The dedicated cut list software costs thousands per year and still doesn't generate proposals. The rendering tools don't know what melamine is. And no tool on earth remembers that you always use 18mm Egger W1000 for carcasses and charge $3.50 per linear meter for ABS edgebanding.
That's the gap arkiTrace fills. Forward a client inquiry, Arki drafts a complete visual proposal — renders, pricing, specs, branded PDF — and delivers it to your inbox in about 3 minutes for 60-second review. You hit send. Arki never emails your client without you.
What's Actually Wrong with the Current Workflow
Let's be specific about where time disappears in a kitchen project.
Pricing is a spreadsheet nightmare. Every manufacturer has their own formula: material cost per m² × area + waste factor + edgebanding per linear meter + hardware (hinges, drawer slides, handles) + labor rate per unit + installation cost + markup. These formulas live in one person's head or in an Excel file that nobody else fully understands. When that person is sick, the whole shop stalls.
Cut lists are done by hand or in expensive software. You count parts, calculate dimensions, figure out which edges get banded (and with what type — 0.4mm PVC, 1mm ABS, 2mm solid), add hardware assignments, total up material consumption. For a 12-unit kitchen, that's 50-70 parts. One error and the CNC cuts the wrong board.
Proposals are Frankenstein documents. A render pasted into Word. A pricing table copied from Excel. A cover letter retyped from the last project. No consistent branding. No material palette. Takes 1-2 hours minimum, and the result looks like what it is — a rush job.
Every project starts from scratch. Your CNC operator knows that back panels always get a 4mm groove. Your shop manager knows that Blum CLIP top 110° hinges go on all overlay doors. But your quoting tool doesn't know any of this. So you re-enter the same rules, the same materials, the same formulas — project after project, year after year.
What an AI Teammate for Sales Proposals Does Differently
arkiTrace isn't a rendering tool with a cut list bolted on. Arki is your sales team: it learns your business and carries that knowledge across every project. Forward a client inquiry, Arki drafts the full proposal, it lands in your inbox for 60-second review, you hit send. You approve everything.
Here's what that means in practice.
Organization Memory: Your Business, Stored Once
When you set up arkiTrace, you teach Arki your world:
- Material catalog — every board, laminate, stone, and solid surface you work with. Names, categories, SKUs, prices per sqm, supplier info, even texture images. Bulk import via CSV.
- Pricing formulas — your labor rate per unit, your markup percentage, installation cost per kitchen, edgebanding price per linear meter by type, hardware pricing (Blum CLIP top hinges at $3.00/pair, Hettich Actro 40kg slides at $20.00/pair, handles at $4.50 each). Every formula you currently have in Excel.
- Construction rules — free-form rules scoped to your business: "Always route 4mm groove for back panels." "Carcass material is always 18mm melamine unless client specifies otherwise." "Use 0.4mm PVC edgebanding on hidden edges, 2mm ABS on visible." Arki remembers and applies these automatically.
- Business type — when set to
kitchen_manufacturer, Arki focuses on furniture components: carcasses, doors, drawer fronts, shelves, plinths, fillers, cornices. Not room dimensions, not wall paint. Furniture.
This setup happens once. After that, every kitchen project Arki touches uses your real materials at your real prices with your real rules.
Excel Pricing Import
Already have a pricing spreadsheet? Drop it on the canvas. Arki reads your columns, identifies the pricing logic, and imports it. You don't re-enter 200 materials by hand. Your existing work carries over.
Walking Through a Real Kitchen Project
Let's trace a complete project — a U-shaped kitchen, 18 units plus a tall pantry, Egger carcasses, lacquered MDF doors, quartz countertop.
1. Drop the Sketch
You have a sketch from the client meeting. Hand-drawn, photo of a whiteboard, rough CAD layout — doesn't matter. Drop it on the arkiTrace canvas.
Arki analyzes the layout: "I see a U-shaped kitchen with approximately 18 base and wall units, a tall unit on the left, and what appears to be a peninsula. Want me to identify the units in detail?"
You confirm, add notes: "Tall unit is a pantry with internal drawers. Peninsula has seating on the far side."
2. Material Recommendations
Ask: "What countertop options work here?"
Arki searches your material library and presents three options with real prices:
| Material | Price/sqm | Estimated Total | Supplier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Silestone Calacatta Gold | $310 | $2,790 | StoneHub |
| Cosentino Dekton Rem | $215 | $1,935 | StoneHub |
| Egger F812 Levanto Marble | $52 | $468 | Egger Direct |
These aren't generic suggestions. They're from your catalog, with your negotiated prices.
3. Render in 30 Seconds
Pick the Silestone. Tell Arki: "Render this with the Silestone countertop, lacquered MDF doors in RAL 9010, and Egger W1000 carcasses."
Thirty seconds. Photorealistic render. Not a generic AI image — it preserves your layout, your proportions, your design intent. Want to show the client three colorways? "Render three variants: RAL 9010, RAL 7016 anthracite, and natural oak veneer doors." Three more renders, same layout, different materials. Each one pulled from your library.
4. Extract Dimensions
Ask: "Extract dimensions from the sketch."
Arki reads measurements using extended reasoning and outputs an editable surfaces table. You verify the numbers, adjust where the sketch was ambiguous, confirm.
5. Generate the Cut List
This is where arkiTrace earns its keep for manufacturers.
Ask: "Generate a cut list for this kitchen."
Arki produces a production-ready parts list. For an 18-unit kitchen plus pantry, you're looking at roughly 59 parts. Here's what the cut list includes:
Part-Level Detail:
- Part name (e.g., "Base Unit 600 — Left Side Panel")
- Material assignment (Egger W1000 ST9 18mm)
- Length × Width in mm
- Quantity
- Edge banding — which edges (L1, L2, W1, W2), type per edge (0.4mm PVC or 2mm ABS), color
- Hardware assignment (2× Blum CLIP top 110° for doors, Hettich Actro 40kg for drawers, handle position)
Material Summary:
- Total m² per material (e.g., 14.2 m² of Egger W1000, 6.8 m² of lacquered MDF)
- Total linear meters of edgebanding by type
- Hardware totals (38 hinges, 12 drawer slides, 19 handles)
Pricing Section:
- Material cost breakdown per board type
- Edgebanding cost (linear meters × price per LM by type)
- Hardware cost itemized
- Labor (unit count × your labor rate)
- Installation
- Markup
- Total with and without VAT
Every number comes from your organization memory. Arki doesn't guess your Blum hinge price — it uses the $3.00 you entered. It doesn't estimate edgebanding — it calculates linear meters from actual part dimensions and applies your per-meter rate by type.
6. Build the Proposal
Ask: "Build a client proposal."
Arki generates a branded PDF:
- Cover page with the hero render and your company logo
- Design overview with the concept narrative
- Material palette — images, names, pricing for each surface
- Renders — the three colorway variants
- Cut list summary — grouped by unit, with totals
- Pricing breakdown — materials, hardware, labor, installation, total
- Cover letter — professional, tailored to the project scope
Your brand colors are auto-extracted from your logo. Language toggle lets you switch between English and Greek. Want to change the cover letter tone? "Make it more formal." Done.
The proposal that used to take 2 hours of copy-paste in Word now takes one sentence.
DXF Quantity Takeoff: When the Client Sends Drawings
Some clients come with proper drawings. An architect sends a DXF floor plan of a 200 m² apartment — kitchen, two bathrooms, built-in wardrobes, laundry room cabinetry.
Drop the DXF on the canvas. arkiTrace parses it client-side (the file never leaves your browser — privacy by design). Arki classifies the layers automatically, supporting AIA Standard, ISO 13567, BS 1192, and layer names in six languages (English, French, Italian, German, Greek, Spanish).
Then ask: "Run a quantity takeoff for the kitchen and bathroom scopes."
Arki produces a priced bill of quantities:
- Areas, lengths, and counts extracted from the drawing geometry
- Waste factors applied per material category (8% for boards, 5% for countertops, 10% for tiles)
- Scope-aware pricing — kitchen cabinetry is priced with your kitchen formulas, bathroom vanities use your bathroom rates. Same material, different labor, different markup
- Total BOQ with itemized breakdown
One DXF. Multiple scopes. Priced from your catalog. No Bluebeam license, no manual counting.
The ROI Math
Let's keep this simple.
Manual kitchen pricing today:
- Entering dimensions and materials in Excel: 45 min
- Cut list calculation (parts, edgebanding, hardware): 60-90 min
- Pricing (applying formulas, checking supplier prices): 30-45 min
- Proposal (Word, paste renders, format pricing table): 60-90 min
- Total: 3-4.5 hours per project
With arkiTrace:
- Drop sketch, confirm layout, pick materials: 2 min
- Render (30 seconds per variant): 1 min
- Cut list generation: <1 min
- Proposal draft assembled in your inbox: ~3 min
- Review and send: ~1 min
- Total: under 5 minutes per project — always in your control
If you do 40 kitchen projects per year, that's 120-180 hours saved — three to four full work weeks back. At a shop billing rate of $65/hour, that's $7,800-11,700 in recovered time.
Material library setup is a one-time cost. Import your existing CSV or spreadsheet. Enter your pricing formulas once. Set your construction rules once. Every project after that uses them automatically.
Plans start at Pro €1,199/month. Most kitchen manufacturers use the Pro plan for the full cut list and proposal workflow. Growing teams go to Scale €2,499/month for expanded seats, team approval workflows, and white-glove onboarding. Enterprise custom for businesses with existing CRM/ERP they want Arki to bridge into.
Compare that to dedicated cut list software at $1,500-4,000/year that doesn't render, doesn't generate proposals, and doesn't remember your construction rules across projects.
Built for People Who Build Things
arkiTrace isn't built for architects who want pretty pictures. It's built for manufacturers who need production-ready output — priced, dimensioned, and ready for the CNC. The cut list isn't a summary. It's a parts list your shop floor can work from. The pricing isn't an estimate. It's calculated from your actual material costs, your actual labor rates, your actual markup.
Arki is the teammate who knows your entire material catalog, never forgets a pricing formula, and doesn't need to be told twice that back panels get a 4mm groove.
See It With Your Own Projects
Book a strategy call and we'll run through your actual kitchen workflow — your materials, your pricing formulas, your construction rules. See how Arki drafts a full proposal from a client inquiry in about 3 minutes — delivered to your inbox for approval before anything reaches your client.