Dampere: online configurators that turn perforated metal orders from weeks into minutes
Dampere, based in Paris and Lille, manufactures perforated metal sheets for buildings: facades, sun screens, railings, fences and decorative panels, sold across France, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and the wider European market.
Led by Olivia Theilliere, Head of Digital Strategy, Dampere moved its sales online with five webshops, each dedicated to a product family. Every webshop is connected to Grasshopper models running on ShapeDiver. Customers set dimensions, perforation patterns and options in a custom interface built on the front end API, see the result in 3D within a minute, and order directly. In the background, the backend API generates the DXF files and production documents the factory needs, with no manual CAD work in between.
Key Facts
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Business Impact
- Order design cut from weeks to minutes
- Five webshops with live configurators
- DXF production files generated online
Client Name
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Tools Used in the Case Study
Discover which tools and technologies were used for "Dampere: online configurators that turn perforated metal orders from weeks into minutes".
ShapeDiver
ShapeDiver turns Grasshopper definitions into secure web apps and 3D configurators that engineers, architects, clients and fabrication partners run in any browser, with no Rhino licence and no access to the underlying script. AEC firms such as Thornton Tomasetti, Ramboll, Haskoning and Walter P Moore use it to share computational design tools across offices, automate drawings and production files, and connect parametric models to their own software through APIs.
Grasshopper
Grasshopper 3D is the visual programming environment included with Rhino for computational and parametric design. Architects, engineers, façade specialists, and fabricators connect components on a canvas to generate geometry, process data, and test design variables without building every option manually. It works directly with Rhino’s modeling environment and can extend into BIM, analysis, optimization, and fabrication workflows through official integrations, scripting, and plugins.
User Experience
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Why this tool/tech was selected
Dampere spent six months evaluating alternatives before choosing ShapeDiver. The deciding factor was the ability to read, transform and produce DXF files directly from Grasshopper, which matched the way the factory already worked and removed the manual AutoCAD step from every order.
ShapeDiver's APIs let Dampere build its own branded webshops in PHP while keeping all product logic in Grasshopper, where it can be changed without touching the web code. The front end API drives the live configurators that customers use, and the backend API produces factory documents automatically. Around 98 percent of Dampere's configurations run on ShapeDiver, with only the most computationally intensive projects processed offline.
Challenges the Client Faced before
- Manual DXF preparation for every order, hole by hole.
- Customers waited weeks between enquiry and a confirmed design.
- Complex patterns were slow to draw and hard to visualise for clients.
- The process could not scale with online demand across several European markets.
The previous method used
Every order was prepared manually in AutoCAD. A technician adjusted the DXF file by hand for each customer, down to the position of each hole in each sheet, before it could go to production.
Time / Money saved & the Business Impact.
With configurators on ShapeDiver, Dampere's customers went from waiting weeks for a design to configuring and ordering in minutes. Results appear in 3D within about a minute, and the production DXF files are generated automatically, so the order goes from the webshop to the factory without manual redrawing.
Dampere now runs five product specific webshops on the same Grasshopper and ShapeDiver backbone, which lets it serve customers across several European countries. Removing the manual AutoCAD step also removes a source of errors in production files. Olivia Theilliere sums up the strategic shift: the company sees its online shop and eCommerce as the future of how it sells, and ShapeDiver is the engine behind that strategy.
Customer Quote
"We are convinced this online shop and overall eCommerce are the future." Olivia Theilliere, Head of Digital Strategy, Dampere
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