When you want sell a product in more variations than small, medium and large, you usually need some way to guide the user and handle the available variations. This is where product configuration software comes in to help the users make choices and verify that the it’s possible to combine the choices in the requested way. Adding interactive product 2D/3D-visualization to a product configurator just makes it easier to use for new people and makes them more comfortable with buying the product.
Traditionally you have always presented the customers with pictures of selected variations of the product in brochures and structured information texts and part tables. With software added there is a very good opportunity to make sure that whatever the user is configuring, they see a correct picture of what they are going to buy.
Levels of visual configuration
Depending on your products level of complexity you can break it down into three levels of visualization (plus you can also start without visualization and just rely on instructive text and choices)
Visual configuration with 2D Images
If you product is available in a limited number of variants (eg. small, medium, large) you can easily just add a photo or image per size of your product. The number of images required depend on how many choices that affect the visual apperance.
A product that has 5 widths, 5 depths, 2 heights and 5 colors would require 250 images. Adding another color would require +50 images.
Visual Configuration with 3D Models
A product that is available in a limited numbers of variants (eg. small, medium, large) would also be possible to visualize with 3D models making it more interactive with rotation and click interaction. This would require one 3D model per variant in a similar manner to how 2D images (see above) would require.
Visual Configuration with Parametric Sales CAD
For complex products with many variants you can add a parametric CAD model to describe the product instead of matching images/3d-models per variant. This enables complex product configuration while the user still sees and understands every change thanks to the direct update of visualization.
A greenhouse that is manfactured to measure with 10cm precision would only require 1 parametric Model, compared with 100 000+ 2D images/3D-models
This is why we recommend adding Sales CAD to your E-commerce and start offering customized products to your clients