To price a sectional door you need to know the opening, the use, which vehicle goes through and how many cycles a day it will do. That information almost never arrives, and your technician ends up driving to the industrial estate just to measure. The customer can sort all of that out on screen, before calling you.
It is ten to seven and the sales engineer is already on the motorway. They are driving 140 kilometres to a logistics platform to measure some loading bays. The maintenance manager called on Friday: six doors need replacing, two of them for articulated lorries, and they want a price “this week”. All they have sent is a photo of the opening with a pallet in front of it and one sentence: “more or less like the one there”. You cannot calculate a door from that, so it is time to get in the car.
Once there, they find out what the phone call did not say: the lintel is lower than expected, one of the doors opens into the cold store and needs 80 millimetres of insulation, and the night shift opens and closes each door more than a hundred times. Industrial motor, photocells, traffic light, dock shelter. None of that was in the photo. They get back to the office mid-afternoon with the tape measure, a notebook full of dimensions and four and a half hours of driving in their legs.
The quote goes out on Thursday. On Friday, the maintenance manager replies that they have received two more and that the cheapest one “looks similar”. It is not: it has a 40 millimetre panel and a motor designed for a residential garage. But on paper they are three PDFs with a price at the bottom, and nobody at the platform has time to compare duty cycles or insulation values. In the end the figure wins, not the door.
Without knowing the opening, the use or which vehicle goes through, any price over the phone is a risk. So someone goes out to measure, even though many of those visits end in “we will let you know”. Each one is half a day of a technician who is not installing, plus the vehicle, plus the days the customer spends waiting.
What it costs youTechnicians clocking up miles instead of fitting doors.
The customer knows lorries come in, but not whether they are rigid or articulated, or how much room the driver needs to reverse. If the opening is too tight, the first knock on the lintel comes soon. If it is oversized for no reason, the quote goes above the competition's.
What it costs youA badly sized door gets paid for in damage or in lost orders.
Vision panels, integrated wicket door, ventilation grille, photocells, traffic light, type of operation, way of opening. If one of these is not written down, the door leaves the factory without it or with whatever someone assumed. Changing it with the door already hung in the warehouse means going back with materials and another crew.
What it costs youSecond visits that were never in the quote.
In a PDF, a 40 millimetre sectional and an 80 millimetre one are two lines of text. So are a motor rated for 150 cycles a day and a garage one. The person buying for a warehouse is not a door specialist: if they cannot see the difference, they compare the final figure and sign the cheapest, even if it was never designed for their use.
What it costs youYour margin goes on discounts to match whoever is selling less door.
The person asking for the quote is the maintenance manager; the person signing is the operations director or the general manager, who has never stood on the loading bay with your technician. What reaches them is an email with three PDFs and one question: “which one do we take?”. Everything explained during the visit does not travel with the quote.
What it costs youThe arguments get lost before they reach whoever decides.
Work out what the visits that only serve to give a price cost you. The values are an example; replace them with yours.
€ a month
The values are an example: replace them with yours. The calculation is a simple multiplication and does not come from any study.
Your technician goes to confirm the opening, not to discover it. From their own warehouse, the customer defines door type, use, opening dimensions, panel, insulation, colour, motor and way of opening, and sees an indicative price calculated with your price list. By the time they call, they know what they want and roughly what it will cost.
A guided configuration with an indicative price
The customer chooses a van, a rigid lorry or an articulated lorry, and the vehicle appears to scale in front of the door, with the dimensions of the opening and whether it fits and with how much clearance. The door goes up and down with a button to check the clearance with the leaf open.
A vehicle to scale, plus open and close in 3D
Nothing is left hanging between the office and the workshop. Vision panels, wicket door, grille, photocells, traffic light, dock shelter, motor and way of opening all go into the order sheet, with a reference and a quantity for every part: leaf, tracks and brackets, motor and control panel, remote. With your rules loaded, if the use is logistics the standard motor does not even appear.
A factory order sheet with your rules
The labels on the 3D show the indicative insulation, the expected cycles per day and the motor recommended for that use. If they are hesitating between two or three doors, they see them side by side with the differences highlighted. The buyer understands why your door costs what it costs before putting it next to another one.
Technical labels and a comparison of up to three options
The maintenance manager forwards a PDF with the configuration and an image of the door, instead of a flat quote. With a phone and the QR code, management can see the door at real size on their own loading bay in augmented reality, with nothing to download.
PDF, image, QR code and augmented realityChoose the articulated lorry, lower the height of the opening until it stops fitting and press Open to check the clearance.
An open demo, with no registration, with example products and prices. It is designed for manufacturers, dealers and installers: private customers are welcome to try it, but we do not sell the product.
In 20 minutes you see the demo with a sectional similar to yours and we talk about which types, uses and rules would have to be loaded so your customers can configure the door themselves.
Most projects for manufacturers fall between €14,500 and €35,000, depending on the catalogue, the manufacturing rules and the integrations. Maintenance and hosting from €190 a month. We start from a base that already works: you are not paying for development from scratch.
Would you rather talk it through? Call 662 061 421 or write to grup3d@grup3d.es.
There are more short answers in frequently asked questions about 3D configurators and who we are in 3D configurator company.
The demo includes an industrial sectional, a garage sectional, a roller shutter, a high-speed fabric door and a sliding door, with uses ranging from a private garage to a communal garage, a warehouse or logistics. Your configurator would only show the types you manufacture or install, with your panels, thicknesses, colours and motors; whatever you do not sell simply is not there.
The customer chooses the vehicle that has to go through and the configurator places it to scale next to the opening they measured, showing whether it fits and with how much clearance. The minimum clearances follow your technical criteria, so the answer matches what your technician would give on site.
Yes. There is a garage sectional for homes and apartment blocks, with ribbed, flat, micro-profiled or wood-effect panels and opening by remote or by phone. A private customer can see the door on their own façade in augmented reality, and a residents' association can compare up to three options with their prices before the meeting.
With industrial doors, what weighs most is the number of types you want to offer, the technical rules for clearances and motors that have to be programmed and whether you want a connection to your ERP or an area for installers. Developments start from €6,500 for a visual configurator of one product family; most projects for manufacturers fall between €14,500 and €35,000, depending on the catalogue, the rules and the integrations, plus maintenance from €190 a month. In a 20-minute demo we go through your range and put in writing what is included and what is not.
Yes, as part of the bespoke development. Enquiries that arrive with the door already configured can be assigned to the installer or the branch for each area, and can go into your CRM so the sales rep has the full configuration before calling the customer.
To confirm the opening before manufacturing, usually yes: the configurator does not replace the final measurement. What changes is that nobody has to drive out just to give a price. The technician goes to a job the customer already understands, with the door, the motor and the extras decided.
See all the door and window configurators → · See all the 3D configurators by sector →
Window, door or monoblock with box · per project
See page →Standard, reinforced or armoured · with transom
See page →Aluminium, PVC, security or venetian · motor and sensors
See page →A guide to ordering an industrial or garage door: how to measure the opening, which vehicle has to get through, door type, insulation and motor. With a 3D example.
Read the guide (in Spanish) →