Introduction
indEx Enclosures has manufactured custom ATEX-certified and industrial enclosures in Ashford, Kent since 2012. Buyers and engineers in oil and gas, marine and heavy industry increasingly design in 3D and want models they can drop into their own project files — yet the enclosure trade still quotes mostly by phone and email.
indEx closed that gap with a Grasshopper model on ShapeDiver. Visitors set width, height and depth, pick a material, see a live 3D preview with an indicative price, and can download an STL after leaving an email. That gated download now brings in qualified leads every day, each with a full specification ready to quote. The same definition is being extended toward laser-ready flat patterns.
Shaking a traditional industry
Alex Pawle is the CEO of indEx Enclosures. We spoke with him about the motivations behind the configurator, and the benefits it brought to their sales process.
You make enclosures, not software. How did you build a web configurator?
We did not do it all at once. The hard part is not the box, it is the rules behind it. The gland layouts, the hinge sides, the material thicknesses, the ATEX constraints that decide what is allowed where. We had someone who knew the company build the first model, then a 3D designer rebuild it properly in Rhino and Grasshopper. Connecting it to the site through the ShapeDiver Viewer API was the lighter part, and we built that front end with the help of AI coding tools.
Why move a traditional, safety-critical product into 3D?
Our industry is quite traditional, so there’s little 3D content. We realised our customers are more and more keen on 3D models to incorporate into their own designs. Being the first to offer that, thanks to ShapeDiver and Grasshopper, is how we gain a leadership position and give our customers more value.
How qualified are the leads it generates?
Highly qualified. To end up on a website selling electrical enclosures, use a configurator, fill it in and then press a button to download a file, you have to be qualified. Every day we get lead forms from the configurator with details we can follow up on.
What’s next for the platform?
We want a 3D file to travel with every quote we send offline, since most of our business still starts with a phone call. Then we want the model to generate the flats (the 2D cutting files) for the laser instead of a designer drawing them by hand. After that, a second configurator for our larger cabinet enclosures, the ones as tall as a person.
Thank you, Alex!
Try the live configurator
The model runs on indEx Enclosures’ website. Set dimensions and material, watch the enclosure and indicative price update, and request an STL when you want the file.
Product configurators
indEx runs its enclosure logic as a Grasshopper model on ShapeDiver, so customers configure and price in the browser while the same definition can feed production files.
