How to turn a MatrixGold file into a 3D product viewer

Before you start

MatrixGold is built on Rhino and saves its designs as Rhino .3dm files, so there is nothing to convert. The studio opens a .3dm directly, reads the units it was drawn in, and leaves hidden objects and layers out, the same way the free 3DM viewer does. If you only want to look at a file without an account, that viewer is the quickest check.

One habit pays off before you upload: name your layers and objects sensibly. Metals, stones and prongs are detected from layer and object names, so a layer called "Diamonds" or "18K yellow" gives the studio more to go on than "Layer 07".

Step 1: upload the .3dm

Open the studio and drag the file onto the stage, or browse to it. The getting started guide covers the three ways to load a piece; for your own CAD file it is the Upload tab.

Once a ring loads, Ring parts in the Upload tab lists what the studio found: the band, the head, the centre stone and the accent stones. If a part is wrong, switch it there. Your fixes are saved with the design, and the band you choose is the one the ring size and try-on fit are measured on.

Step 2: check the metals and stones

The detected materials are a starting point. Pick a gemstone or metal preset for the whole piece, recolour one part at a time, or give the head and pavé a different metal for a two-tone finish. The gems and metals guide walks through each option.

Diamonds render with real refraction, dispersion and fire, and coloured stones keep their saturation, so what you see on the stage is what shoppers will see in the viewer.

Step 3: save it as a project

Sign in and save. The design goes into Dashboard → Projects, and from then on it autosaves a few seconds after each change. Saving is what makes the next step possible: links and embeds point at a saved design.

Step 4: publish it

You have two ways to put the piece in front of people.

1. A share link. In the Share panel, turn the link on and choose what visitors can do: swap metal and gem, auto-rotate, zoom, try it on and more. Sharing is free on every plan, and from the Starter plan you can password-protect the link. The export and share guide lists every control.
2. An embed on your product page. In Dashboard → Embeds, create an embed, choose Saved Design and pick the project. Its install pane gives you an iframe that renders the saved design as a read-only interactive 3D viewer. Embeds start on the Starter plan, and each one is locked to the domains you list, so it only loads on your own site.

The embeds guide covers the appearance settings for a saved-design embed, such as the environment, metal and gem overrides, and the Page scroll switch for a viewer that sits inside a long page.

Step 5: paste it into the product page

Paste the iframe where your product media goes. On Shopify, that is a product description or a theme block. On a phone, a saved-design embed takes every gesture over the piece by default; turn on Page scroll if the viewer sits in a long page, so a vertical swipe scrolls the page and a sideways drag turns the piece.

What the shopper gets

An interactive 3D view of the real design, rendered from your own CAD file, that they can turn and zoom on any device. The same project can also feed stills, a turntable video and AR try-on, which is the subject of a 3D jewelry viewer for your website and rendering Rhino and MatrixGold files online.