Pergola, Carport and Quincho 3D Quoting Tool
By Facundo Campo, 3D quoting tool developer
In short: A 3D quoting tool for quinchos, pergolas and carports lets the buyer choose dimensions, wood or metal structure, roofing type, barbecue grill and enclosures, shows the covered structure in 3D and calculates the price with the builder's rules; it is custom-built on the engine that already handles structure and roofing in the metal building configurator.
"I want a 4 by 6 quincho with a grill, how much?" (A quincho is an Argentine covered barbecue area, usually open-sided and attached to or near the house.) That's how almost every inquiry reaches a builder of quinchos, pergolas or carports, and it's almost never enough to give a price. A 3D quoting tool for quinchos and covered outdoor structures lets the customer set dimensions, structure, roofing, grill and enclosures, see it assembled in 3D against their house, and get a price calculated with the builder's rules. Estructuras 3D doesn't have a public configurator for this industry today: it's developed for each company, and much of the work is already solved in the engine.
Why quoting a covered outdoor structure is so hard
A quincho looks like a simple product, but in sales it has more variants than a metal building. The customer is buying something attached to their house that they'll see every day, so how it looks matters a lot to them. They ask whether the wood is eucalyptus or treated pine, whether the roof can be clay mission tile or has to be metal sheeting, whether the grill goes inside or in a corner, whether it can be enclosed with glass in winter, and whether the carport can be built against the property-line wall.
The sales rep answers with photos of past jobs and a rough quote. Then comes the site visit, the measuring, the sketch, the final quote and, often, the customer who says "I pictured it taller." Each round costs time from the owner or whoever knows how to quote, and in high season, when everyone wants their quincho before summer, that's time nobody has.
What gets parameterized in a quincho, pergola or carport
Although each builder has its own way of working, the variables that drive the product and the price are well known:
- Dimensions. Width and depth, clear height under the beam and, for a single-slope roof, the height at the low side. For carports the vehicle rules: covering a small car is not the same as covering a pickup with a roof rack.
- Placement. Freestanding (on four or more posts) or attached to the house, resting on a ledger beam against the wall. That changes the number of posts and the shape of the roof.
- Structure. Wood (round logs or sawn beams, with their section and species) or metal (structural tube, steel sections). For a pergola, also the spacing of the top rafters, which determines how much shade it gives.
- Roofing. No roof (open pergola), corrugated or trapezoidal metal sheeting, polycarbonate, mission or French clay tile over tongue-and-groove boards, or insulated panels. Each one needs a different roof pitch and different secondary framing.
- Grill and countertop. Firebrick, with its hood, countertop and sink; on the left, on the right or at the back.
- Enclosures. Open, one side closed in with masonry, glass or curtain enclosures, half-height walls.
- Floor. Concrete base, ceramic tile, wood deck, or nothing if the customer already has a patio.
- Extras. Lighting, ceiling fans, gutters and downspouts, wood treatment.
Each of those points is a rule: a post every so many meters depending on the beam section, a minimum pitch depending on the roofing, a gutter on each side that drains. What the owner does from memory can be written down, and that's what we explain in turning the owner's know-how into rules.
What the metal building engine already solves
A quincho, a carport or a backyard canopy is, at its core, a structure with a roof. That's exactly what the metal building and canopy configurator handles: frames at a given spacing, purlins, a single-slope or gable roof with its pitch and overhang, open or partial cladding, floor and sheeting colors. It's a good place to see how a parametric structure behaves when a dimension changes.
What has to be developed for a quincho builder is what a metal building doesn't have: the wood structure with its sections and joints, the tile, the grill with its hood, the attachment to a house and the finishes that make the customer say "that's how I want it." Since everything comes from rules and nothing is modeled by hand, as described in parametric rendering, a 4 × 6 m quincho (about 13 × 20 ft) and a 5 × 8 m one are the same piece of software with different numbers.
How sales change in high season
People buying a quincho decide a lot with their eyes, and they usually decide as a family. A link that opens exactly their quincho, with the grill on the left and clay mission tile, travels through the family WhatsApp group much better than a text quote. When the inquiry comes back, it already has the configuration set and the debate settled: we cover this in WhatsApp and 3D quoting.
For the builder, the most important effect is that quoting no longer depends on a single person. In high season, if the person quoting is the owner, the owner is the bottleneck. With the rules loaded, a sales rep or whoever is at the counter can quote an attached 3 × 5 m pergola with polycarbonate without calling anyone. That's the idea behind sales reps who quote on their own.
Then there's pricing. Wood, steel tube and metal sheeting change price often, and a quote with outdated values eats into your margin. If costs live in a table the factory manages, they're updated once and every new quote comes out right.
How a project for this industry gets started
Facundo Campo works on these projects remotely with builders in Argentina and Latin America. For a builder of quinchos, pergolas or carports, what's needed at the start is the catalog (even if it's just photos of past jobs), the sizes they build and their limits, the woods, metals and roofing they work with, and how they put a quote together today. With that, we define what's standard, what's an option and what stays out of the quoting tool because it needs a site visit. The step-by-step is in how a 3D quoting tool is built and the service in custom 3D quoting software.
If you build quinchos, pergolas or carports and want to see your product in a quoting tool, message me on WhatsApp at +54 9 11 6193-3176 or by email at facundocampo100@gmail.com with photos of two or three typical jobs and a sample quote. That's enough to start talking about what your quoting tool would include.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a quincho configurator to try?
There's no public quincho configurator. The closest is the metal building and canopy configurator, which handles structure, roofing and cladding; the quincho version is developed for each builder with its wood, its roofing and its grill.
Can the same tool quote a wood pergola and a metal one?
Yes. The structure material is one option in the quoting tool: it changes the sections, the post spacing, the connections and the price, but the logic of dimensions and roofing is the same.
Can the customer see the quincho attached to their house?
The quoting tool can show the quincho attached to a generic wall, with the ledger beam and the roof slope. Showing it on the customer's actual house is custom rendering work, which isn't part of instant quoting.
What about jobs that don't fit any standard?
They stay outside the quoting tool and go through the usual site visit and quote. The quoting tool handles the variants the factory sells often, which tend to be most of the inquiries, and frees up the person quoting to focus on the special cases.
