Product Configurators

Selling and producing customized products has always been a challenge. Usually merchants communicate with clients in order to understand all of their requirements. This involves sending emails, images, quotes and other information. Then, the product has to be manufactured. Normally, makers require technical drawings or manufacture ready CAD files that can be loaded into a 3D printer, a CNC machine, etc. Someone - either the merchant or the manufacturer, has to spend time to produce these files. This whole manual process involves a lot of people, takes a long time, leads to errors and increases the overall price of the product. But above all, from a business point of view this way of doing things does not scale.

Online product configurators solve many of these problems. Clients can play with different options, get immediate feedback on the price and the appearance, and then decide whether to purchase the product. Configurators can be used to automatically produce manufacturing ready CAD files. This eliminates common errors and speeds up the overall delivery time. Online product configurators are accessible worldwide and 24/7. All these advantages drastically improve the user experience, reduce the cost of products and ultimately lead to more sales.

In addition, this kind of software enables new and innovative business models. For example, the following proof of concept allows you to engrave an arbitrary image on a panel wall. The user experience is not limited only to the options available on the left, you can also interact with objects from the 3D scene. Here, you can drag the image in order to change its position. The technology can also be used to sell digital products. In our example you can get the technical drawings of the configured product by clicking on the download button.

The most expensive and challenging task, when building such configurators, is writing the product's visualisation code. No matter which 3D engine you choose, this task will probably take the most time and effort. ShapeDiver changes all this and eliminates the need for writing 3D visualization code. They enable designers to visualize parametric models on the web. Defining complex geometry and business logic with design tools like Rhino and Grasshopper is easier than writing custom code. ShapeDiver greatly simplifies the task of building product configurators with flawless user experience.

New Branch Ltd. is a trusted partner of ShapeDiver. We provide Grasshopper modeling and full software development services. We are experts with Shopify and WooCommerce. We are also developing an eCommerce solution to make things even simpler.