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Cmsmart Ecommerce provides custom ecommerce and WooCommerce development services for web-to-print, product personalization, plugin support and API integration.
Cmsmart Product Designer Plugin Engineer
Builds and supports the Cmsmart Product Designer (NBDesigner) for WooCommerce.
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In short
The online design tool settings WooCommerce merchants configure inside Cmsmart Product Designer decide exactly what a shopper can type, draw, or drop onto a product — and left on their defaults, they quietly cost orders, reprints, and support time every week.
What does it cost you when Design Tool settings are left on default?
Cmsmart Product Designer ships Text and Elements options already switched on, which is fine for a first launch but rarely matches what a specific print shop, POD label, or B2B catalogue can actually produce. Left untouched, the defaults quietly let buyers design artwork your production line can't use.
None of this shows up as an error message — it shows up as a reprint, a refund, or a ticket three weeks later:
Cmsmart insight: the toggle we see cause the most support tickets is Force min/max font size switched on with its value field left blank. The help text says an empty field dismisses the setting — so the toggle alone enforces nothing, and a shop can believe a size floor exists that was never applied.
What does a well-tuned design tool look like for your shop?
With Text and Elements options matched to your production line, a buyer only ever sees fonts, sizes, and art your press or printer can use — so what they approve on screen is what ships, and nobody on your team has to catch a bad file before it reaches production.
Picture the editor open on a phone, the way most buyers actually use it: the font-size list only offers sizes your label stock prints cleanly, the color swatch opens already set to your brand's ink match, and the clipart panel shows your own seasonal art first because the global library is off for that product line. The buyer never sees a dead end, because every option on offer is something you can actually deliver.
Example scenario: A print-on-demand apparel seller turns off Enable Text transform unproportionally and sets a 24 pt minimum in Minimum font size ahead of a weekend sale. A shopper picks a bold display font; the size picker only offers values the garment printer can hold a sharp edge on, and the on-screen preview matches what comes off the heat press. Nobody from the shop steps in before the order confirms.
How does Cmsmart's Design Tool tab control online design tool settings WooCommerce buyers experience?
Cmsmart Product Designer reads Design Tool > Text Options and Elements Options on every page load and renders the buyer's editor from them directly — there is no cache to clear and no per-product override needed unless you want one, since WooCommerce's own product settings still decide which products carry a designer at all.
The Design Tool tab sits inside WooCommerce > Settings > Cmsmart, alongside General, Appearance, Colors, Upload design, Output, Libraries, Printing Options, Request Quote, Designers, and Live chat & Design monitor. Design Tool itself splits into six groups: Text Options, Elements Options, Image Options, Free draw Options, QR code Options, and Misc Options. This chapter covers the first two, field by field, from a live 2.17.0 capture:
Every field below is read straight off that capture — no label, default, or help text here is guessed.
Image Options, Free draw Options, QR code Options, and Misc Options live further down the same tab. We're giving them fresh captures and their own chapter next, rather than guess at field names we haven't verified on this install.
What's the business value of getting Text and Elements options right?
Matching these two sections to what your press, printer, or brand guidelines can actually deliver turns the online designer from a generic canvas into a guardrail: Cmsmart Product Designer only offers buyers choices your production line can fulfill, so fewer proofs come back for a second look.
Rough worksheet: if staff fix a misconfigured design (wrong color, a too-small size, an unused feature) on N orders a month, at M minutes per fix and a loaded cost of $H per hour, tightening these two sections is worth roughly N × M ÷ 60 × $H a month — before the reorders and refunds a bad proof causes. Put your own numbers in.
How do you configure Text and Elements options step by step?
Every field below is a toggle, text field, or checkbox inside Cmsmart Product Designer's own settings screen — changing them takes minutes per product line and needs no code, template edit, or support ticket to Cmsmart.
What buyers see once these are set: the same tool icons down the left of the editor, each a direct reflection of the tools left switched on — and, specific to Text Options, the curved-text preset appears only when Enable Curved Text is on.
Common mistakes once a store starts tuning this tab:
Cmsmart insight: WCAG 2.1's Resize Text criterion expects body text to stay usable enlarged up to 200% — a reason not to let Minimum font size sit so low a finished design is unreadable before it's even printed.
Going further: what can Cmsmart build on top of the Design Tool?
Text and Elements options cover what one store needs out of the box. When a merchant needs rules those toggles can't express — different defaults per customer group, a locked brand kit across a multi-vendor catalogue, or a font list that changes by product — Cmsmart builds that as custom development on top of Cmsmart Product Designer.
Ideas we've built for stores that outgrew the stock toggles:
Cmsmart's 2.17.0 release shows how far the stock plugin goes without custom work: the automatic print-ready PDF a buyer's order generates on Process now matches the exact page geometry of a custom-size product, the same way the admin's Create PDF button does — a named improvement we call print-ready PDF that matches the order, shipped with no settings change required.
Get a custom Design Tool quote or read more about product designer customization.
Why work with Cmsmart on your Design Tool setup?
Cmsmart has been building and supporting Cmsmart Product Designer (formerly NBDesigner) as a Netbase JSC division since 2012, so the settings in this chapter come from the team that also builds the custom work when the stock toggles run out.
Cmsmart has delivered web-to-print and product-designer projects for 6,300+ client projects across 80+ countries since 2012, with 4,600+ delivered and 1,800+ stores still live. Reviews are public on Trustpilot, rated 4.2 out of 404 reviews. One five-star review, from a reviewer listed as "Web Developer" (GB):
“We have had the NB Designer plugin installed for three years and have experienced absolutely no problems during that time. It is wonderful to see their commitment to continuous development, with new features being added frequently to keep the software current and highly capable.” — read the full review on Trustpilot.
Related chapters in this series:
Frequently asked questions about Cmsmart Design Tool settings
Do I need custom development to change Text or Elements options?
No. Both tabs are standard Cmsmart Product Designer 2.17.0 settings. If you need rules a toggle can't express, such as different defaults per customer group, Cmsmart builds that as custom development.
Will changing "Default font sizes" affect designs buyers already made?
In practice, the list only changes which sizes the size picker offers going forward; it doesn't reach back into a design already saved with a size no longer on the list.
What happens if I turn on "Force min font size" but leave "Minimum font size" empty?
Nothing is enforced. The field's help text says leaving it empty dismisses the setting, so the toggle alone doesn't set a floor — it needs a value too.
Can I show only my own clipart and hide Cmsmart's global library?
Yes. Set Enable Cmsmart global clipart library to No, and the panel's own help text confirms this limits buyers to your site's cliparts only.
Does turning off "Enable Flaticon" remove icons already used in existing orders?
No. Turning a tool off only hides that option going forward; it doesn't touch artwork already saved in an order's print file.
Where do Image, Free draw, QR code, and Misc options fit in?
They're the four remaining groups on the same Design Tool tab, covered with fresh captures in the next chapter — start from the installation chapter to follow along.