Linking Your Own Products
Instead of typing an amount for an option, you can point it at a real product in your catalogue. Pick "Oak legs" in the configurator and your actual Oak Legs product is what gets charged and what appears on the order.
This is worth doing when the option is a thing you genuinely stock and want to see on the picking list.
How to link one
- In Composer, open the option you want to price.
- Choose Link product instead of entering an amount.
- Pick the product, or drill into a specific variant.
- Optionally set Units if one selection should charge several of them (a set of four legs).
The option now charges that product's price, and the product appears on the order.
Picking a variant is optional for a priced option. If you link a product without choosing one, 3D Bits charges that product's default (first) variant, and re-resolves it on every publish - so if you later reorder the product's variants, the link follows. Drill into a variant when the product has several and you mean a particular one.
This is the one exception. An included product - an item that always ships with certain configurations - must be linked to a specific variant. Linked at the product level it cannot be added to a cart, and publishing warns you.
What a price snapshot is
When you link, 3D Bits records the product's price at that moment. That recorded price is what the configurator shows shoppers and what it charges.
It does not follow the product afterwards. This is deliberate - your configurator's prices should not silently change because someone edited a product in another tab - but it means the two can drift apart, and you have to close the gap when they do.
When a linked product changes
Open the project and look at the Pricing catalogue card. Every link shows its state:
| State | Meaning | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| (no badge) | The link matches your catalogue | Nothing |
| Price changed | The product now costs something different | Click Update prices and republish |
| Not purchasable | The product is a draft, archived, or not in the Online Store channel | Fix it in Shopify admin - no republish needed |
| Link broken | The variant no longer exists | Re-link the option in Composer, then publish |
| Not checked | Shopify could not be reached just now | Reload the page |
The project list shows a Linked product changed badge, and your home dashboard warns you, so you do not have to go looking.
If a linked variant has been deleted, shoppers cannot add that product to their cart at all - not just that option. Treat Link broken as urgent.
Which changes need a republish
Only these two:
- ✅ The linked product's price changed - republish
- ✅ The linked variant was deleted - re-link, then publish
These do not need one:
- ❌ Renaming the product, or changing its image
- ❌ Stock level changes
- ❌ Making it Active again after it was archived - fix it in Shopify admin and the configurator carries on
Changing prices safely
If you are repricing several linked products at once, or the work will take a while, pause the configurator first. On the project page, the health banner offers Pause this configurator: shoppers see a short message you write instead of the configurator, and the product cannot be added to a cart while you work.
A safe sequence for a bigger repricing job:
- Pause the configurator on the project page.
- Change your product prices in Shopify.
- Come back - the Pricing catalogue card now shows both figures for each link.
- Update prices and republish.
- Resume selling.
Pausing takes effect immediately and does not require a publish, so you can do it even while a link is broken.
Pausing stops new configurations being added. A shopper who already has one in their cart can still check out.
If you would rather not pause, you can set the Shopify product to Draft while you work - but that removes the product page entirely, including for anyone arriving from an ad or a search result.