Anyone who manufactures complex products knows the challenge: presenting them in a way that is both easy to understand and technically reliable. Attractive images alone are not enough for successful sales. What is needed is a shared understanding between customers, sales teams, and engineering.
The encoway 3D Configurator brings together product knowledge, configuration rules, and state-of-the-art visualization in a single, consistent platform. Even highly complex solutions are generated live in a 3D environment, automatically validated, and enriched with all the information required for sales, marketing, and planning. This transforms 3D technology from a visualization tool into a strategic asset for your entire quotation and sales process.
- Faster quote generation
- Seamlessly integrated processes
- Reduced error rates
- Enhanced customer experience
- Relief for sales teams
What Is a 3D Configurator?
A 3D-configurator is a solution that enables you to visualize products as interactive 3D models and customize them according to individual requirements. Changes to dimensions, materials, colors, components, or product variants appear instantly within the 3D environment. This allows users to immediately see what the final product will look like and which combinations are possible. At the same time, the system continuously validates configurations in the background, ensuring they are technically correct, manufacturable, and feasible.
Modern solutions such as the encoway 3D Configurator go far beyond visualization. They combine product knowledge, configuration logic, and spatial rules in a digital model while automatically providing the data required for quoting, planning, and manufacturing. The result: faster decisions, fewer errors, and significantly more efficient sales and planning processes.
Experience live how the encoway 3D Configurator can become a driver of success for your business.
Jörg Thymm – Product Manager & Head of 3D Visualization
encoway GmbH
Inside 3D Configuration: Key Features of the encoway Configurator
What makes a 3D configurator truly powerful is the depth of its capabilities: a high-performance rules engine for spatial logic, dynamic parametric models, and the performance to handle even the most demanding scenarios smoothly. This combination makes encoway a technological leader and directly influences how effectively your organization can leverage 3D technology.
Intuitive Visual Configuration
Configure freely in a 3D environment while automatically preventing invalid combinations
Create and customize products visually and intuitively using drag-and-drop interactions within the 3D scene. Thanks to anchor points and visual rule-based guidance, even users without specialist knowledge can configure products correctly and error-free.
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Parametric Modeling
Create flexible 3D models that dynamically adapt to parameter inputs
Control your 3D configurations using parametric input values, generation rules, and spatial relationships. Unlike static geometries, parametric models define geometric dependencies. Whenever a value changes, the configurator automatically updates the 3D model accordingly.
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Outstanding Performance
Configure smoothly, even with the most demanding models
The encoway 3D Configurator can load, display, and edit thousands of 3D models within seconds. Visualization remains smooth even on standard laptops and tablets, without the need for specialized high-performance hardware.
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Customer Success Story: What Can a Product Configurator Do for My Business?
Before implementing the encoway 3D Configurator, Hager’s quotation process was characterized by disconnected systems, lengthy coordination cycles, and frequent misunderstandings.
Today, the entire solution is created digitally. Customers, sales teams, and production departments work from a single source of truth, enabling the Hager Group to deliver a seamless end-to-end customer journey.
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The 6 Biggest Benefits of a 3D Configurator for Your Business
Higher Conversion Rates
A 3D product configurator presents your solutions exactly as they are, including all variants, dimensions, and spatial relationships. This creates immediate clarity, eliminates uncertainty, and accelerates purchasing decisions. The result: higher conversion rates, fewer configuration errors, and a more compelling product experience.
Faster Quoting and Sales Cycles
Even highly complex configurations can be completed within minutes because every selection is instantly visualized and technically validated. Questions, revisions, and approval loops are drastically reduced, allowing your teams to deliver quotations much faster.
Improved Customer Experience
Customers can watch products take shape in real time and customize them according to their exact requirements. Even complex solutions become easy to understand. With integrated augmented reality capabilities, customers can even place products directly into their own environment before making a purchase decision.
Reduced Errors and Reliable Feasibility
The 3D configurator permits only valid configurations and automatically detects collisions, incorrect clearances, and incompatible combinations. Even users without extensive product expertise can create technically correct solutions, significantly reducing rework and clarification efforts.
Seamless Integration into Downstream Processes
The spatial model created in the configurator can be used immediately in planning and manufacturing workflows, for example as CAD or BIM data. No manual recreation, no system breaks, and no unnecessary delays. The result is a fully digital process that creates value for both internal teams and customers.
Master Unlimited Product Complexity
Even highly complex, variant-rich, or continuously evolving product portfolios can be managed effectively with the encoway 3D Configurator. Using our functional modular architecture, you can confidently configure even the most sophisticated solutions, today and in the future.
Experience Live How the Benefits of the encoway 3D Configurator Create Value for Your Business
What Can You Expect from the encoway 3D Configurator?
The encoway 3D Configurator combines capabilities that rarely come together with this level of sophistication: visual configuration, dynamic models, versatile export formats, and performance powerful enough to handle even massive scenes with ease. All features work seamlessly together, giving you a level of flexibility that goes far beyond visualization alone. As a result, virtually any product landscape can be represented reliably, no matter how complex.
Intuitive Visual Configuration
Configure interactively in a 3D environment and automatically prevent invalid combinations
- Select product components, position them in space using drag-and-drop, and connect them intuitively.
- Anchor points and a visual rule framework ensure logical and spatial consistency while preventing collisions, invalid combinations, and non-manufacturable configurations.
- An intuitive user experience guides users to technically correct results, even without prior product knowledge.
Real-Time Visualization
Experience configuration changes instantly
- Every visually relevant modification appears immediately in the 3D model, without delays or loading times, providing instant visual feedback.
- Smooth rotation, zooming, selection, and editing, even in highly complex configurations.
Parametric Modeling
Create flexible 3D models that adapt dynamically to parameter inputs
- Build variable 3D models based on dimensions and parameters, rather than relying on static CAD geometries.
- Adjust shapes and structures dynamically without the need for manual remodeling.
- Create consistent, rule-based geometries.
- Perform real-time parametric modeling while simultaneously generating visualization models and STEP files.
Visual Rule Framework
Automatically ensure valid configurations
- Verify distances, spatial relationships, sequencing, and collisions using an unlimited number of freely definable rules and respond accordingly.
- Automatically prevent invalid and non-manufacturable combinations.
- Ensure technically correct configurations even for non-expert users.
Export Formats & Integration into Downstream Processes
Export 3D models in multiple formats and continue processing seamlessly
- Export directly from the 3D configurator to STEP, IFC, 2D DXF, STL, OpenUSD, or AR formats.
- Generate high-quality technical drawings without additional CAD software.
- Use results directly in planning, manufacturing, sales, and marketing processes without media breaks.
- Keep models consistent across all formats so that customers, sales teams, and engineers always work from the same product definition.
Easy-to-Use Editors in the encoway CPQ Studio
Manage content centrally and make updates visible instantly
- Create and edit visual product models, rules, and configuration logic directly in intuitive editors within encoway CPQ Studio, without coding effort.
- Maintain all model updates in a central location and make them immediately available throughout the 3D configurator, creating a truesingle source of truth. Even complex model maintenance remains transparent and efficient.
Intuitive Visual Configuration
Configure interactively in a 3D environment and automatically prevent invalid combinations
- Select product components, position them in space using drag-and-drop, and connect them intuitively.
- Anchor points and a visual rule framework ensure logical and spatial consistency while preventing collisions, invalid combinations, and non-manufacturable configurations.
- An intuitive user experience guides users to technically correct results, even without prior product knowledge.
Real-Time Visualization
Experience configuration changes instantly
- Every visually relevant modification appears immediately in the 3D model, without delays or loading times, providing instant visual feedback.
- Smooth rotation, zooming, selection, and editing, even in highly complex configurations.
Parametric Modeling
Create flexible 3D models that adapt dynamically to parameter inputs
- Build variable 3D models based on dimensions and parameters, rather than relying on static CAD geometries.
- Adjust shapes and structures dynamically without the need for manual remodeling.
- Create consistent, rule-based geometries.
- Perform real-time parametric modeling while simultaneously generating visualization models and STEP files.
Visual Rule Framework
Automatically ensure valid configurations
- Verify distances, spatial relationships, sequencing, and collisions using an unlimited number of freely definable rules and respond accordingly.
- Automatically prevent invalid and non-manufacturable combinations.
- Ensure technically correct configurations even for non-expert users.
Export Formats & Integration into Downstream Processes
Export 3D models in multiple formats and continue processing seamlessly
- Export directly from the 3D configurator to STEP, IFC, 2D DXF, STL, OpenUSD, or AR formats.
- Generate high-quality technical drawings without additional CAD software.
- Use results directly in planning, manufacturing, sales, and marketing processes without media breaks.
- Keep models consistent across all formats so that customers, sales teams, and engineers always work from the same product definition.
Easy-to-Use Editors in the encoway CPQ Studio
Manage content centrally and make updates visible instantly
- Create and edit visual product models, rules, and configuration logic directly in intuitive editors within encoway CPQ Studio, without coding effort.
- Maintain all model updates in a central location and make them immediately available throughout the 3D configurator, creating a truesingle source of truth. Even complex model maintenance remains transparent and efficient.
Combine the Capabilities of the 3D Configurator Any Way You Need
With the encoway 3D Configurator, you can freely combine all capabilities, from visual configuration and parametric modeling to exports and downstream integrations. The result is a powerful modular platform that enables you to implement virtually any visual configuration scenario and manage continuously growing product portfolios in-house.
How to Impress Customers with 3D Configuration
3D‑configuration makes even highly complex products immediately understandable. Customers can interactively explore solutions, see how they work, and understand how they fit into their environment. Beyond sales and engineering, marketing and communication teams benefit as well. Outputs generated by the configurator can be reused directly as high-quality content for websites, catalogs, presentations, and other customer-facing materials.
Live 3D Configuration in Customer Meetings
Imagine visiting a prospect and configuring the desired solution right in front of them. With fast loading times, smooth performance, and every product variant instantly available, even on a tablet, your prospect no longer has to wait weeks for a reliable quotation. Instead, they experience the actual solution they are considering purchasing. For an even more immersive experience, place your product directly into the prospect’s environment using Augmented Reality. This allows them to see how much space the solution requires, whether connections remain accessible, and whether everything fits as intended. At that point, your prospect can clearly see why your solution is the right choice.
3D Product Configurators: Interactive Experiences on Your Website
With the encoway 3D Configurator, you can offer customers a compelling and interactive buying experience directly on your website. Prospects can customize products according to their individual requirements and instantly experiment with colors, materials, variants, and dimensions.
Results are displayed immediately, and thanks to the visual rule framework, only valid and manufacturable configurations can be created, even by users without technical expertise. This enables faster, more confident purchasing decisions.
At the same time, your organization benefits from increased website engagement. Interactive 3D experiences keep visitors engaged for longer, encourage repeat visits, and increase the overall relevance of your website.
See for yourself how encoway customers bring their products to life with interactive 3D experiences.
Frequently Asked Questions About the encoway 3D Configurator
What is a 3D configurator, and how does it differ from a traditional product configurator?
A traditional product configurator helps users assemble products from predefined components and attributes according to a set of rules. A 3D configurator extends this concept with a visual dimension: products are created as interactive 3D models that update dynamically in real time. While traditional configurators typically focus on selecting options, modern solutions such as the encoway 3D Configurator provide much more than visualization. They deliver valuable information for sales, marketing, engineering, and planning, supporting the entire quote-to-order process.
How does the 3D configurator reduce errors and ensure feasibility?
A 3D‑validates every product variant in real time, allowing only combinations that are technically feasible and commercially approved. Within the encoway 3D Configurator, this is achieved through a visual rules framework that automatically checks and prevents invalid combinations, collisions, spacing violations, and other configuration conflicts. Because results can be transferred directly as consistent CAD, BIM, or manufacturing data, no data-transfer errors occur later in the process. Prospects and customers work with exactly the same data generated during configuration. Once an order is placed, the sales-generated configuration data can be used directly within manufacturing processes.
How does a 3D configurator enable faster decisions, higher conversion rates, and more efficient quoting?
A 3D configurator makes even highly complex solutions easy to understand because every configuration is visualized instantly while the system automatically validates technical correctness. This eliminates uncertainty, builds customer confidence, and accelerates informed purchasing decisions. At the same time, accurate configurations can be created in minutes rather than hours, reducing clarification loops and allowing reliable quotations to be generated much sooner.
Can a 3D configurator be expanded and adapted to different product portfolios?
Absolutely. The encoway 3D Configurator can be tailored to virtually any product landscape, from simple components to highly complex, configurable system solutions with extensive variant diversity. Its modular architecture provides a flexible toolkit in which all capabilities work together seamlessly. This allows organizations to model even the most sophisticated product logic and expand, maintain, and manage product portfolios independently while ensuring configuration reliability at all times.
Which systems can the configurator integrate with, and which export formats are supported?
The encoway 3D Configurator integrates easily with common enterprise systems, including: CRM platforms, ERP systems, PIM solutions, PDM systems, PLM environments, eCommerce platforms, Partner and dealer portals. It also supports a wide range of export formats, including: STEP, DXF, IFC, STL, OpenUSD, Technical drawings, Bills of Materials (BOMs). These outputs can be used directly in downstream planning, engineering, and production processes.
How does the configurator perform with complex models, and does it work reliably on mobile devices?
The encoway 3D Configurator delivers exceptional performance even when handling highly complex scenes. Thousands of parametric 3D models can be loaded, displayed, rotated, zoomed, and edited within seconds, even in demanding configurations and layouts. Thanks to its optimized, device-independent 3D engine, visualization remains smooth, stable, and responsive across all devices, including tablets and smartphones.
Discover How 3D Becomes a Strategic Business Tool
In our live demo, you’ll see how abstract product concepts become tangible solutions that customers immediately understand. Experience firsthand how error-free configurations are created automatically, how quotes can be generated in minutes instead of days or even weeks, and how much efficiency is unlocked when sales, engineering, and planning teams work seamlessly from the same foundation.
