Scope
What Ref does, and what it does not do
A platform that claims to cover everything is hard to evaluate and easy to distrust. This page lists the parts of product development Ref covers and the parts it leaves to other tools, with the reason for each. Statements about what is not built carry a date. As of September 2026.
Covered
What Ref does
Files, models and results with their full history. Model directories, parameter sets, result folders, requirements. Every version stays. What you depended on last year reads the same today.
Requirements, architecture, change requests and decisions in the same record as the data they concern. A requirement points at the run that verifies it. The traceability matrix is a view, never a document you maintain.
Runs of your own tools. Interactive sessions for exploration, campaigns of hundreds of runs on Azure Batch. Every run records what went in and what came out, so any result can be rerun and compared.
Agents that work inside that data. An agent works under the same rules as the person who started it. Its output is marked as machine-authored. It drafts; a person decides what is kept.
Compartmented access and a history that does not forget. Versions are never deleted. Who did what, when, with which permission, is the audit trail.
Left to other tools
What Ref does not do
CAD and geometry.
Ref stores CAD files, their versions and what depends on them. It does not open, edit or render a model. Your CAD system stays where it is. We do not think a data platform should compete with a modelling kernel, and we would lose if it tried.
Bill of materials, substance compliance, effectivity.
Quantities and units on the parts you store are available, and the agent can flatten them into a list. Substance declarations under RoHS and REACH, SCIP dossiers, supplier compliance workflows and effectivity dates belong in the PLM or ERP that already holds your parts master. Ref hands data over to it; Ref does not replace it.
ERP.
Procurement, production planning, service. Ref ends where a design is released. The handoff is an adapter we build per customer, billed by the day, and its shape is on our roadmap and not shipped.
SysML behaviour diagrams.
No state machines, no parametric diagrams, no sequence diagrams. We consider parametric diagrams the weakest part of SysML v1, and state machines useful mainly in embedded firmware. Where you need behaviour, you run it: a Python or Modelica model in a container against a parameter set, with the result pinned to its inputs. Structure is covered: components, ports, connectors, interfaces and buses in a graphical editor the agent can edit too. A SysML v2 textual export of that model is planned for this year and is not shipped as of September 2026.
A workflow designer.
There is no drag-and-drop engine for approval routes. A change request has five states: submitted, approved, rejected, implemented, closed. What a change request still lacks is visible on it, and nothing blocks. Sign-off records on a frozen version, with name, timestamp and meaning, are on the roadmap and not shipped as of September 2026. If your process needs them today, we are not ready for you yet.
XMI interchange.
We prefer SysML v2 textual and ReqIF as the two formats we exchange. ReqIF import and export ship today. Custom adapters are usually ready within a week or two, depending on your schedule.
On-premises installation by default.
Ref is a cloud service on Microsoft Azure, normally in the EU region you name, under your own tenant on request. An installation on your own premises is possible. It is scoped and priced as a project, and the operation of the hardware stays with you; it is not the default.
Certificates
What we do not hold yet
Grunetal holds no ISO 27001 and no TISAX certificate as of September 2026. The controls behind both are in place and documented: Azure hosting in the EU, Entra ID sign-in, server-side permission enforcement, a software bill of materials for every release, and containers whose outbound network access is limited to an allowlist. We will run the audit when a customer's procurement requires the certificate, and we put this here so you do not have to ask.
Related
Who should look elsewhere
Ref is the wrong choice if
Your main artefact is CAD geometry and your reviews happen in the 3D view. Your procurement requires a certified tool today. Your process is defined as approval routes that must block until signed. In each case the tools that do this exist, and we would rather you buy one of them than run a pilot that ends in a gap we told you about here.
If none of these applies, a pilot on your own data costs nothing. Tell us about your project.