Understanding VinLocate

VinLocate is a 3D model of your own cellar or wine fridge that you build inside InVintory — rack by rack, shelf by shelf — so the app can point you at the exact slot a bottle is sitting in.

Tip

Requires a paid plan. Free collections get no VinLocate at all — no 3D view, and the sections list on a storage is replaced by an upgrade card. How much of your cellar you see at once then depends on your plan, so it’s worth reading the table before you start.

How much of the cellar you see at once

	Any paid plan	Elite and above
The 3D view	One section at a time. You open a rack or shelf and look at that	The whole cellar stitched into a single room you can move around in
Wine cases	Standalone cases you can fill and search	Place, stack and re-position cases inside the cellar itself

The first row is the one that surprises people. The whole-cellar view is part of Elite and above. A section-at-a-time VinLocate still finds your bottles. You just look at your storage one rack at a time rather than as one room.

In the whole-cellar view on iPhone and iPad, tapping a section flies you into it, with the rest of the cellar dimmed around it. On a fridge, the door swings open and the shelf you picked slides out.

Having us model a cellar for you is something to talk to us about rather than something that happens when you subscribe, and it comes with one trade-off worth knowing up front: on a storage we’ve modelled, the Create, Modify, Duplicate and Delete options disappear from its sections. You can’t reshape that cellar or extend it with new sections yourself — come back to us for changes. Wine cases stay editable.

Note

VinLocate knows where a bottle is only because you put it there. Nothing is detected or guessed. You build the layout first, then place each bottle into a slot. Bottles you haven’t placed still sit in your collection exactly as normal — they simply have no position, and you can list them any time with the Without a 3D position filter.

The three levels

Level	What it is	Example
Storage	The cellar or fridge itself	“Basement Cellar”
Section	One physical unit inside it — a rack, a bin, or a wine case	“Left Wall Rack”
Slot	A single position where one bottle sits	Row 3, column 5

On a fridge the middle level is called a shelf rather than a section — the same thing, named to match the hardware.

What building one involves

1. Create the storage — the cellar or fridge.
2. Choose Rack or Bin.
3. Choose the shape — racks offer trellis, wall-mounted, shelving and rotating-display layouts; bins offer rectangles, triangles and diamonds. Pick whichever looks like the real thing.
4. Set the dimensions — rows, columns and depth, matched to the real slot count.
5. Place bottles — tap a slot in the 3D view, then add bottles to it.

Sections are named for you as you go — Rack 1, Bin 2, Shelf 3. To give one a name that means something when you’re standing in the cellar, tap the three-dot menu beside it and choose Rename. The web app names them for you in the same way; Android is the one that asks for the name first, before you pick a shape.

The builder loops, so you repeat steps 2 to 4 for every rack and shelf you own, tapping Add another each time. A large cellar is a sit-down job rather than a two-minute one. You don’t have to finish in one go — one section is enough to start, and a storage shows no 3D view until it has at least one.

Open a storage → Sections → Create

Racks, bins and cases

Type	Holds	When you locate a bottle
Rack	One bottle per fixed position	We point you to the exact slot
Bin	Unlimited bottles, stacked together	We point you to the bin, not one slot
Wine case	A case kept intact as one unit	We point you to the case

Bins are the honest choice when bottles are piled on each other and shift as you pull them out. Racks are the choice when you want an exact answer.

Finding a bottle

You rarely need to open the 3D view yourself. Any wine you have placed shows a Locate button — on its card in your collection, on the bottle detail screen, and as a swipe action. Tap it and the 3D view opens with that bottle highlighted.

Every position also reads as a coordinate like R3, C5, D1 — row, column, depth. It shows on the bottle in the app and can be printed onto shelf labels, so you can find a wine standing in the cellar without unlocking your phone.

Where the 3D view opens from

iPhone & iPad:  Home → open a storage → tap a section

Whole cellar:  Home → storage card → View 3D

Android:  Cellars → open a cellar → tap a section

Web:  app.invintory.com → Storage → open a storage → tap a section

Android and the web show the same sections and bottle positions as iPhone and iPad, and both can build sections and place bottles into slots. Three differences are worth knowing before you lean on them.

Where it differs	What to expect
Reshaping a section — Android	There is no Modify on Android yet, so a section you have already built cannot be resized there. Reshape it on iPhone, iPad or the web.
Coordinate origin — Android	Android can’t save a coordinate origin yet. Set it on iPhone, iPad or the web, and Android follows it.
Relocate Bottles and Add to Position — Android	Neither is available from the collection selection on Android yet. Place and move bottles from inside the 3D view instead, where both work.

If the 3D view won’t open

VinLocate needs a real iPhone or iPad. If you run InVintory on a Mac, a banner says InVintory is best experienced on our website: 3D cellars aren’t available in the Mac app. Open the web app instead.

One more thing worth knowing: the VinLocate Notification toggle in Settings has nothing to do with drink windows. It controls whether the app offers to place bottles in 3D straight after you add them to your collection.

Next steps

• How to create a cellar or fridge — the prerequisite, before any of this works
• How to create sections in a storage — the step-by-step build, with every shape explained
• Common VinLocate terms — sections, slots, bins and coordinates in one place