A catalog is a grid of 3D pieces on any page of your store. Add products that already have a 3D model, or upload Rhino .3dm files for pieces that aren't products. Shoppers open each piece in 3D: a product has Buy now, which opens its product page, and every piece has Send Inquiry, which emails you.
Catalogs come with the Starter, Growth and Pro plans. They aren't part of the Free plan.
Create a catalog
- In the app, open Catalogs and click Create catalog.
- Give it a Name. Only you see this name, in the app.
A store can have up to 100 catalogs, and a catalog up to 1,000 items.
Add products
- Open the catalog and click Add products.
- Tick the products you want and click Add.
Only products whose 3D model is ready are listed. Their 3D and pictures are reused; nothing is uploaded again. Products never count toward your plan's upload limit.
A product item shows on your store only while the product is active and on the Online Store sales channel. If you set a product to draft, archive it or take it off the Online Store, it disappears from the catalog on your store, and comes back when the product is active and on the Online Store again. The app shows Not on your store next to it meanwhile.
Upload .3dm files
For pieces that aren't products (made to order, one-offs, ideas):
- Open the catalog and click Upload .3dm.
- Choose Upload file, Several files or From a link.
- Keep the page open until each file says Added. Files are converted in your browser, one at a time.
Uploads follow the same rules as a product's file. The 3D model and pictures go to your own Shopify Files. Your .3dm is kept on our private storage only if you tick Keep my original (unticked here by default). With From a link, we keep only the link, encrypted, never the file. See Where is my design file?.
Uploaded pieces have Send Inquiry only, as they aren't products.
Categories, titles and thumbnails
- Categories show as tabs above the grid on your store. Add them on the catalog's Categories tab, then select items and click Assign category. An item belongs to one category at most.
- Click Edit on an item to change its Title, its Details (shown in the popup next to the 3D view) or its Thumbnail (PNG, JPEG or WebP, up to 2 MB, stored in your Shopify Files).
- Your store shows the items category by category, in the order of the Categories tab (items without a category last), then in the item order within each category. The arrows in the Order column move an item up or down within its category.
Show it on your store
The catalog's page in the app has the same three steps under Show it on your store:
- In Online Store > Pages, open the page for your catalog, or add a new one.
- Click Open theme editor. Create a new page template (for example "catalog"), add the The RenderX catalog block to it, paste the catalog ID into the block's Catalog ID setting, and click Save.
- Back on the page, choose that template under Theme template and click Save.
Copy the catalog ID with the Copy button next to it. The block can also take a Heading, the Columns on desktop and on mobile, and Show category tabs. You can show the same catalog on several pages, or several catalogs on one page.
The block adds one small script (under 10 KB compressed) that loads the grid after the page itself. The 3D viewer loads only when a shopper opens a piece, so the page stays fast. No theme files are edited: removing the block leaves your theme as it was.
Inquiries
When a shopper clicks Send Inquiry, they enter their name, email, an optional phone number and a message. We email it to you, with the shopper's email as the reply-to address, so you can answer straight from your inbox. We don't keep the message: we only log that an email was sent, and to which address.
By default, inquiries go to your store email (the one in your Shopify settings). To use another address for a catalog:
- Open the catalog's Inquiries & settings tab.
- Under Inquiries go to, choose Use another address, type it and click Send confirmation link.
- Open the email we send to that address and click the link, then Confirm this address. The link works once and lasts 24 hours.
Until the address is confirmed, inquiries keep going to your store email. Use store email switches back at any time.
Plan limits
| Plan | Catalogs | Uploaded pieces |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Not included | – |
| Starter | Yes | 25 |
| Growth | Yes | 100 |
| Pro | Yes | 500 |
Only uploaded .3dm pieces count, across all your catalogs; products added to catalogs never do. The catalog page shows how many you've used.
If you move to a plan with a smaller limit, the newest uploaded pieces over the new limit are hidden from your store (not deleted) and show Hidden (over plan limit) in the app; they come back when you have room again. On the Free plan, the catalog block shows nothing on your store.
Removing pieces and catalogs
- Remove takes items out of a catalog. Products stay in your store. Uploaded pieces that no other catalog uses are deleted, with their files.
- Delete catalog (on Inquiries & settings) removes the catalog from the app and from every store page that shows it.