Skip to content
3D.MBA
All insights
·11 min read·Engineering

The rules are the product; the rendering is a commodity

Three.js and a competent developer will get you 90% of the pixels. What does not commoditise is encoding what applications engineering knows about what can actually be built — and that knowledge is usually undocumented and partly contradictory.

configuratorscpqmethod

Every configurator project we have run has had the same shape. Eight weeks of visible progress on the 3D, then a wall. The wall is always the rules.

Here is what the wall looks like in practice. We ran a two-week rules workshop with a seating manufacturer. On the second Tuesday, three of their engineers disagreed, in front of us, about whether a particular frame accepted a particular headrest. They had been shipping the range for six years.

That is not a failure of their engineering. It is what happens when knowledge lives in people rather than in an artifact. The configurator project is the first time anyone has been forced to write it down completely, which is why the rules phase surfaces disagreements nobody knew existed.

So we treat the rule graph as the primary deliverable. It is JSON, it is in git, it is diffable, and applications engineering can read it. The 3D scene subscribes to it. The ERP payload derives from it. If we disappeared tomorrow, the graph would still be the most valuable thing we left behind.

The corollary is uncomfortable for buyers: the expensive part of a configurator project is not the part you can see. Budget accordingly, and be suspicious of any quote where the rules work is a line item smaller than the modelling.

Written by the engineering team at 3D.MBA, Ahmedabad.

Disagree? Tell us

Related

More on this

·9 min read

Publish the frame budget or don't ship the scene

Every scene we deliver carries a triangle count, a draw-call count, a texture-memory figure and a p75 frame rate measured on a four-year-old Android. Here is why that list is the contract, and what happens on the projects that refuse one.

·10 min read

Tag binding is 70% of a digital twin project

The rendering is a fortnight. Naming 340 assets consistently, mapping them to tags that were named by six people over eleven years, and keeping the mapping alive through plant changes — that is the project.

Bring us the product you were told could not be configured.

Tell us the option count, the CAD you already have and the frame budget you need to hit. An engineer reads it and replies with a straight answer — including when the answer is that good photography would serve you better.

Book a demoTry the configurator

We reply to every enquiry within one business day, in your timezone — with a frame budget, not a brochure.