PDF Documents
PDF documents need the Pro plan.
Two documents, generated from what the customer configured. They share a designer but they are for different people and they behave differently.
The customer document
A summary your customer downloads while they are still on the page, showing what they designed: their choices, rendered pictures of the finished item, and the price.
People use it to think it over, to show a partner, or to get a decision from someone else. For a considered purchase that is often what turns a browse into an order.
It needs a way to be triggered, either a Download PDF element in your layout or a button control set to that action.
The order document
Generated when the customer adds to cart, and attached to the order. This one is for the people who make the product.
It contains the same configuration, but it may also print the manufacturer code for each chosen option, which the customer document never shows. That is what makes it useful in a workshop: the sheet says the code your supplier uses rather than the marketing name your customer picked.
It also carries a link back to the configuration.
Because this document is about an order, it needs 3D Bits pricing switched on. Without pricing there are no orders of this kind for it to attach to, and the app will tell you so before you publish rather than after.
Designing them
Both are built from sections you can reorder or switch off.
A cover with your logo and the product name. Images of the configured product. An options table listing every choice. A pricing breakdown. And free text for terms, lead times or care instructions.
The pictures are worth attention. Each shot can come from the camera position your customer was looking from, from a point of interest you defined, or from a standard technical view such as front, side or top. For a workshop document, standard views are far more useful than an attractive three-quarter angle, because someone has to build the thing.
A shot can be restricted to particular models or parts, so a detail drawing of one joint shows the joint rather than the whole product.
Colours default to your panel's theme, so the document matches the configurator without separate work, and you can override the font, logo and footer.
Previewing
Preview PDF generates the real document with real content and shows it in Composer, so you can check a long product name does not overflow and the pictures frame properly.
Do check it with your longest option names and your most complicated configuration rather than the default one, since that is where layouts break.