The 3D Product Configurator

The 3D Product Configurator turns one of your Shopify products into a live, customisable 3D model. A shopper types their text, drops on a brand logo, picks a colour, and adds it to the cart — then, once they pay, Printforge generates a print-ready STL for that exact design and delivers it to them automatically. It's the fastest way to sell personalised prints without designing each one by hand.

What your customers see

On your storefront, the configurable product shows a rotating 3D preview (with a 3D / Flat toggle) beside a set of controls. Depending on the design layout, shoppers can:

• Enter one or two lines of text — with a live character count and per-line colour
• Drop on a brand logo from your library, or choose None
• Pick a plate colour and finish

Text and logos can be engraved three ways: Flush (a hairline outline), Etch (recessed about 1mm) or Extrude (raised about 1mm). When they click Add to cart, their exact design is saved and the customised item drops into the Shopify cart like any other product.

Adding a base model

Everything is managed from the Configurator section in your dashboard. Open the Base models tab and click New base model. A base model is the physical object customers personalise — a keyring tag, a nameplate, a coaster — backed by an STL you upload. Give it a name, set the price and currency, choose whether the etch is raised (emboss) or recessed (deboss), and link it to the matching Shopify product.

Save the model first, then re-open it to upload its base STL (up to 50MB). Printforge builds a lightweight preview mesh automatically. If you ever replace the STL, existing orders keep the exact mesh they were bought with, so nothing already sold is affected.

Alongside the standard engrave models, there are two ready-made parametric kinds you can seed with one click — a set of sample nozzles and a cookie cutter. These stay in preview until you link them to a Shopify product.

Design layouts

A layout decides which text and logo slots a customer gets, and where they sit on the model. Every new engrave model is created with four layouts ready to go, so it's customisable straight away:

• 1 Text — a single line of text
• 2 Text — two lines of text
• Logo + 1 Text — a logo above one line
• Logo + 2 Text — a logo above two lines

If a model has no layouts, the storefront shows "This product isn't ready to customise yet" — so leave the default four in place unless you're deliberately customising them.

Logo, font and colour libraries

The Logos, Fonts and Palette tabs control the choices your customers get across every model:

• Logos — the brand logos shoppers can drop on. Click Import brand pack to load the built-in library of tool-brand logos in one go, or add your own SVG logos.
• Fonts — the typefaces available for etched text. Upload a TTF or OTF file for each.
• Palette — the plate colours customers can pick, each with a name and hex value.

Connecting your storefront

The configurator runs inside an embed on your Shopify product page. Open the Connection tab and fill in:

• Storefront origin — the public domain the embed lives on (for example, your-brand.com)
• Shopify store domain — your your-shop.myshopify.com address
• Your Shopify custom app's Admin API access token and Webhook signing secret (create the app with the read orders and write order metafields permissions)

Then click Register webhook and sync orders. This tells Shopify to notify Printforge whenever a customiser order is paid, and it also recovers any paid orders from the last 30 days. This step is essential — without the webhook, paid designs are never generated or emailed.

Where orders land

When a shopper pays for a customised product, Shopify notifies Printforge and a new order appears in the Orders tab. For each one, Printforge generates a watertight, print-ready STL from the saved design, then:

• Emails the customer their download link
• Writes the download URL back onto the Shopify order
• Marks the order as delivered

Each order card shows the design summary — the model, the text entered, the logo, and the customer's email — plus a status of pending, generating, ready or delivered. A safety-net job re-checks for any pending orders every hour, and failed orders can be retried from the same tab.

Letting customers upload their own artwork

Shoppers can also bring their own design. The first tile in the logo picker is Upload your logo: they upload a PNG, JPG or SVG (up to 5MB), tweak the detail, and tick a box confirming they have the rights to use the artwork. Printforge re-traces the original image on its own servers when it generates the STL, so the print always matches what they uploaded. You can see the confirmed-rights status and a thumbnail of the artwork on each order.

What you need

The 3D Product Configurator is a Scale plan feature and requires a connected Shopify store. If you're new to the Shopify side, set that up first — see Connecting Your Shopify Store. The Preview and Test tab lets you try any model (and download a test STL) before you make it live.