What you can build, how and about that question.

What can you build with ShapeDiver

• Interactive 3D models shared by a simple link, publicly or privately, with named clients and colleagues.
• Full applications with custom user interfaces, built using App Builder - ShapeDiver's UI framework driven entirely from Grasshopper components. Tabs, containers, conditional parameter visibility, images, tables, charts, drawing tools, and click-and-drag interaction, with no traditional code.
• Embedded configurators in an existing website via iframe, App Builder embedding, or direct embedding of the 3D viewer.
• Integrations with eCommerce platforms, ERP, CRM, and external databases through the Backend, Platform, and Viewer APIs, with TypeScript, Python, and .NET SDKs available.
• Live links to other design environments — Speckle, Autodesk Forma, VIKTOR.ai, and Rhino or Adobe Illustrator used as desktop clients, so geometry and data can be pushed to ShapeDiver for computation without exporting and re-importing files.
• Automated production output — meshes, NURBS, drawings, cut files, and data in the formats your manufacturing process needs, generated with every configuration.
  
  App Builder: a complete application interface, defined entirely from Grasshopper components. Read the documentation at ShapeDiver

How ShapeDiver works

1. Prepare your Grasshopper file. Install the free ShapeDiver plug-in from Food4Rhino or Rhino's Package Manager and follow the platform's guidelines and best practice.
2. Upload it. Drag and drop the file into your browser. If it follows the guidelines, ShapeDiver scans it and produces a working online application within seconds.
3. Set it up. Configure lighting, camera, background, AR settings, parameter order, and visibility, and whether the model is public or private.
4. Share or embed it. Send a link, embed it in your website, or drive it from your own application through the APIs.

Behind that is the part you don't have to build: auto-scaling Rhino servers, load-balancing and dispatch, a caching system so identical configurations are never computed twice, redundant infrastructure with zero-downtime updates, a permissions system that keeps your definition private, AWS hosting, SSO on Enterprise plans and SOC 2 Type II certification.

ShapeDiver or Rhino Compute? That is the question

This is the most common technical question we're asked, and the honest answer is that it depends on your team. Rhino Compute gives you full control, but you are responsible for building, securing, scaling, and maintaining the server infrastructure yourself, and for developing the front end. ShapeDiver is a managed service: the infrastructure, viewer, permissions, caching, and UI framework already exist. If you don't have a DevOps capability — or you'd rather your computational designers spend their time on design logic than on server administration — ShapeDiver is usually the shorter route. Talk to us if you want to work through the comparison for your specific case. Read ShapeDiver's full comparison at the ShapeDiver Blog.