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Onboarding Guide

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Welcome to Anvil. This is everything you need to get set up and started, plus what to read, in order.

Keep the Glossary open for unfamiliar terms, and follow Accounts & Access to get your logins and tools.

Onboarding point of contact: Nathan Conforti (nathanconforti@anvil.co). Ping him with any onboarding questions or blockers.

Checklist

Work through these roughly in order:

  • Laptop (Mac) ordered and configured, or BYOM (bring your own Mac)
  • Accounts & access provisioned — work through Accounts & Access for every system
  • Payroll set up on Gusto, I-9 verification and trainings done
  • Brex card ordered (if applicable)
  • Invited to all team recurring meetings
  • Set up Claude Code, Codex, and the other LLMs we use — AI Tooling
  • Get your dev environment running — Dev Environment & Conventions
  • Office / facility tour

Your Machines

You'll work across three kinds of machines:

  • A Mac laptop for general day-to-day work — also what you SSH into your Linux dev server from.
  • Your own Linux dev server, which you SSH into for all our software development.
  • A shared Windows server for the many Windows-only tools in engineering design and manufacturing, reachable over Tailscale via RDP or SSH.

Full details in Infrastructure.

Reading List

Read these in order — they move from company context to technical architecture to how we operate.

  1. Company Overview — what we do and why
  2. Vision & Strategy — where we're headed
  3. Engineering Overview — how the technical work is organized
  4. Key Repositories — the repositories we build on
  5. Manufacturing Overview — the standardized cell and our first facility
  6. Manufacturing → Safety — required reading for everyone
  7. Policies — how we operate
  8. FAQ — common questions

External Resources

Background reading that frames the technical and product areas we work in. Many of these are examples of libraries, products, or approaches related to our work — not necessarily tools we use directly, but useful reference points for what we're trying to accomplish.

CNC machining & equipment

Resource Description
A Comprehensive Guide to CNC Milling Tools Broad overview of CNC milling tool types, geometries, and when to use each — useful context for understanding our 120-tool library. CNC Cookbook also covers: End Mills, Feeds & Speeds, Ball Nose Cutters, Face Milling, and CNC Machine Types
DVF 5000 Catalog (PDF) Manufacturer spec sheet for the DN Solutions DVF 5000, our standard 5-axis machining center
Example machine video The type of machine we build around

CAM, toolpath & simulation

Resource Description
ModuleWorks CAM kernel for toolpath generation and simulation (we integrate it)
Toolpath Reference for automated CAM / toolpath generation
Siemens Create MyVirtual Machine Machine simulation and verification (watch the video on the page)
Third Wave Systems · Vericut Machining physics simulation and G-code verification

CAD, PMI & cloud architecture

Resource Description
Tech Soft 3D — HOOPS Exchange · HOOPS AI / ML CAD data exchange SDK; PMI and model-based-definition extraction. Also search "STEP242" for background on MBD/PMI/CAD data exchange
Onshape: cloud architecture, FeatureScript execution, collaboration, FeatureScript docs Reference for scalable kernel execution, versioning, collaboration, and cloud-native CAD workflows
Carbon (crbnos) Open-source ERP/MES/QMS framework we build our ERP and customer platform on

Key internal documents

These live in Google Drive (access via your Workspace account):