1
Create your account
Go to the sign-in page and choose Create one to switch to sign-up. You can either fill in
first name, last name, work email and a password, or use Continue with Google or
Continue with Microsoft.If you sign up with an email and password, plastics.com emails you a six-digit code and shows a
Verify your email screen. Enter the code to finish. Returning users sign in from the same
page with Sign In, and reset a password from Forgot password?.
Sign up with your work email where you can. plastics.com groups colleagues who share an email
domain into one organization. A personal address cannot be attached to an organization, and
anyone you invite from it is asked to create their own instead.
2
Answer three short questions
The first time you sign in, plastics.com asks three questions before it hands you the app:
- What best describes your work? and What industry are you in? Pick your role, for example Materials Engineer, Procurement or Injection Molder, and your industry.
- What brings you to plastics.com? Select any that apply, such as getting material recommendations, understanding tradeoffs, extracting data from datasheets, or getting samples and quotes.
- Set up your team. Confirm your organization name and add colleagues by email address. Only an organization administrator can edit the name here; everyone else sees it read only.
3
Ask Herman AI
When onboarding finishes you land in chat, which is where most work starts. The assistant is
called Herman AI.Type a question in the box at the bottom, for example a material recommendation for a part or a
comparison between two grades.Type
/ in the same box for focused commands: /find, /compare, /alternatives, /datasheet
and /spec. There is also a Product Search mode for when you already know the product or
manufacturer part number you are after.Past chats are listed in the left sidebar, and New Chat starts a fresh one.4
Browse the catalog and ask about a product
Explore Materials in the left sidebar opens the product catalog. Narrow it with the filter
panel, which has both Quick Filters and Advanced Filters views, and open any product to
see its details and datasheets. Product cards and detail pages carry a Request Info button,
which opens a short three-part form beside the product: material specs, fulfillment details,
then submit. Materials a supplier has marked as ready to ship show Order Now instead.
5
Group your work into a project, and invite your team
New Project in the left sidebar opens a short form. Project name is the only required
field; you can also add a description, applications, manufacturing location and a priority,
then choose Create. A project holds the materials you gathered and the chats about them
under Overview, Materials, Chats and Team tabs. Invite Members adds
teammates to it as Viewer, Editor or Admin, up to your own level on that project.To add people to the organization itself, open Organization Profile, which has Users and
Invites tabs and an Invite Users button that takes a list of email addresses.
Organization administrators send invitations directly. If you are not an administrator, yours
is created as pending and an administrator has to approve it before it is sent.
A few things worth knowing
- Tracking a request. Orders in the sidebar opens My Orders, where each request moves through RFQ, Quote, Accepted, Placed and Done.
- Units. Your profile has a Preferences card with a Unit System setting, Metric (SI) or Imperial (US), controlling how property values are shown to you.
- If you are a supplier. Merchant-role accounts land on a merchant dashboard instead of chat, and get catalog, pricing, warehouse, order and customer tools in the sidebar.
- Help. The support page has an email address for our team.