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Recording Available!
Perfect your design skills with an hour long “Tips and Tricks” training session. Listen in, as Oliver Farrant, 2020 Fusion Senior Customer Support Specialist as he discusses frequently asked questions & popular technical design topics.
What was covered:
• How to produce a 360° Panorama
• All about the 2020 Cloud and how to access catalogue content
• How to use grouped items
• And so much more…
In reply to: Fusion Render Engine
Hi Francis, thanks again for your enquiry.
2020 has an ongoing policy of active development of its products to ensure its customers get the best possible results from the software. One of the ways of helping us to achieve this is to share your thoughts in further detail with our support team, who will be able to provide tips and advice to allow you to get the best possible performance from Fusion’s lighting and rendering mechanism, as well as record your specific challenges and suggestions in these areas.
If you’re in the UK, you can call the Support Team on 01233 635566 and they will be happy to help. Please be sure to have your licence key (dongle) number to hand.
In reply to: Decorative Catalog – What do you think?
Hi Peggy,Glad you figured it out. We are in fact working on some ideas to deliver notifications.
For the moment though, the best way is just to check in the Newsfeed of your 2020 Cloud window. When we have an update or a new release we post a note in there.
You’ll also see usage tips and other handy entries!
Best,
2020 Admin
Perfect your design skills with an hour long “Tips and Tricks” training session. Join Oliver Farrant, 2020 Fusion Senior Customer Support Specialist as he discusses frequently asked questions & popular technical design topics.
When: April 21, 2016 from 14:00-15:00 GMT
What you can expect to learn:
• How to produce a 360° Panorama
• All about the 2020 Cloud and how to access catalogue content
• How to use grouped items
• And so much more…
Who should attend?
Kitchen and bathroom designers, interior designers, remodelers, design-build professional and builders.
If you would like to learn more, take advantage of our spring discount for online training! Visit http://www.2020spaces.com/training/commercial and use the coupon code ‘Spring10’ for 10% off any online class.
To take advantage of the spring discount, you must register for classes online by April 30, 2016.
Questions: commecial.training@2020spaces.com
Make Bright Ideas a Reality with 2020 Design
Enhance your designs by incorporating lighting into them. With 2020 Design, learn how to create visually stunning and realistic renderings that will please your customers. See how adding energy saving LED lights over or under wall cabinets, inside wall cabinets or on toe kicks will showcase your design.
Listen in, as John Morgan presents the best practices in lighting, helpful tips about lighting products and countless techniques to make your designs shine.
hi everyones,
just wondering if anyones have any tricks and tips that they would like to share on using custom textures for the kitchen backsplash?
for example: like a 4×12 rectangle tiles and you want to get it in a stagger look. how do you do that?
or: random long brick pattern mosaic, how do you get the continuous look?
and do you have any website that you would like to share on where you download your images?
Make Bright Ideas a Reality with 2020 Design
Thursday Feb 18, 2016, 2-3pm EST
Enhance your designs by incorporating lighting into them. With 2020 Design, learn how to create visually stunning and realistic renderings that will please your customers. See how adding energy saving LED lights over or under wall cabinets, inside wall cabinets or on toe kicks will showcase your design.
Join presenter John Morgan for this complimentary 1 hour webinar and discover best practices in lighting, helpful tips about lighting products and countless techniques to make your designs shine.
Importing an AutoCAD .DWG file into Giza can be a great time saver by allowing you to import an already created architectural floor plan, however not all DWG files are created equal and some can be just plain problematic for Giza. Here are the top 5 common problems when importing DWG files along with some tips on how to handle them.
1. The Drawing is a Mess
Have you ever imported a DWG file and just got way too much information? Many DWG files we see contain not only the floor plan, but also ceiling grids, electrical plans, plumbing layouts, etc. This can really clutter the drawing making it difficult to plan the furniture. When Importing the DWG you have the option of importing All Layers or only Active Layers.
Many times the architect who created the drawing might have turned off these layers ahead of time for you. It is worth testing if importing using Active Layers will result in a cleaner looking drawing. This setting will only import layers which are ON in the DWG and will ignore any layers turned OFF. This will give you the flexibility to ask the person who is sending you the DWG file to turn off those extra layers you don’t need. AutoCAD has an additional layer state called Frozen which Giza does not recognize. Many times we see the architect will Freeze layers instead of turning them off. Giza will still import frozen layers so it is best to ask them to also turn off any frozen layers to prevent them from importing into Giza. Keep in mind that you can always turn the layers off once they are imported into Giza. Giza has a layer manager which you can turn off and on layers yourself to clean up the drawing.
2. The scale is wrong
Occasionally you will come across a DWG file that was created in AutoCAD using a different scale or perhaps it might have been drawn using Metric units. After importing a DWG file I recommend taking a measurement of a door opening to make sure the drawing is scaled correctly before placing your furniture. If you measure a door and it reports 3 Inches instead of 3 Feet, then you may need to re-import the drawing using a different scale setting. When importing your DWG file there is a setting to Convert Units From. The Setting of Inch is the default setting and is what you will use for most DWG files. However in some cases you may need to change this to MM or CM if it is a metric drawing, or sometimes to Feet. If changing this setting still does not give you the correct scale, then it will be necessary to manually scale the file in Giza after the import.
3. Things are missing from the drawing
After importing a DWG file you may sometimes find that items such as the doors and walls are missing. There can be a few reasons for this. The most common cause is that some items such as the doors and walls were created in AutoCAD using “AEC” or Architectural Blocks. These are items that Giza cannot import directly. There is an AutoCAD command called EXPLODE which will break down the blocks into more simple elements such as lines, circles, and arcs which Giza can import. If you are missing these items, you should ask the architect who prepared the DWG if they can explode these items before sending you the DWG file. Another reason these items may be missing is if the DWG file is using XREFS. This stands for external reference and is essentially many DWG files linked together. AutoCAD has the ability to open several DWG files and overlay them to make a complete project. So they may put the Walls in one DWG file and the rest of the drawing in another DWG file. Giza does not support this method. The entire drawing must be contained in a single DWG file when importing into Giza. You should ask the person sending you the DWG file if it contains any XREFS. If so, ask the architect to “Bind” or “Insert” all the XREFS into a single DWG file they can send you.
4. The program crashes
Occasionally when importing a DWG file it may cause Giza to completely crash or shut down. This is usually due to an incompatible block or item in the DWG file that Giza is trying to convert to a symbol. On the Giza DWG load option screen there is a setting at the bottom right called “Blocks To”. You have a choice of Elements or Symbols.
When Giza is set to “Symbols” which is the default setting, it scans the drawings for any blocks and tries to convert them to a corresponding Giza symbol or furniture object from a manufacturers catalog. This setting was originally developed to convert the manufacturer symbols from the 2020 CAP Program to Giza. If the DWG file was created in the 2020 CAP Studio program and it contains manufacturer symbols you want to convert to Giza, you should use the Blocks to Symbols setting. However, if the drawing is strictly an architectural floor plan and you will be placing your own furniture symbols then using the Blocks to Elements setting usually will result in a cleaner drawing. This should also prevent the program from crashing if it encounters an object it cannot convert. Even if you do not experience a crash it is worthwhile to import the drawing twice. Once using the Elements setting and once using the Symbols setting and then taking better result.
5. The imported drawing is zoomed out very far
Some drawings after you import them and use the zoom all button will zoom further away instead of filling the screen. This is caused by an object(s) or attribute far away from the main drawing. Deleting these objects from the drawing will then allow you to zoom back to the main file. You can use the Invert Trick to select and delete these items away from the main drawing.
- Draw a selection window around the main drawing to highlight what you wish to keep.
- Once that is selected, go to the Edit menu > Select > and click Invert.
- You will see your drawing deselect, and then Giza will select any other objects that were outside your selection window.
- Now just press the Delete key on your keyboard. Those items away from the drawing should now be deleted.
- Click the zoom all button and see if the drawing now zooms to fill your screen.
Please feel free to share if you find these tips helpful or if you see any other common trouble when importing DWG files into Giza.
Worksheet is full of features that are designed to cut down on the amount time required to finalize a project. Many of us veterans have spent the last two decades perfecting the art of quick worksheet-ing. However, every so often I still catch some people doing things the long way. I wanted to share some brief insight into a few features that may save you some time on a project. A more detailed walkthrough on some of these features is available in the 2020 Worksheet User Guide, but I will try to cover the basic options below.
(1) 2020 Compare
2020 Compare’s key feature is right in the name. This tool allows you to compare two worksheets against each other. This is especially useful for reconfigs as you may compare your old worksheet against the new worksheet with the new modifications. Compare will generate three outputs: a list of new items added, a list of excessive items remaining, and a list of items that are reusable. You may compare any specific field on the worksheets as well. For example, filter by specific part numbers, manufacturer codes, option numbers, or Alias tags. To access this feature in Worksheet, select “Compare” from the Tools menu.
(2) Catalog Date / Catalog Location Fields
Catalog Date and Catalog Location fields can be especially useful when revisiting an old worksheet. From the View menu select Columns then “Customize Columns”. At the bottom of the list of columns you should find “Catalog Date” and “Catalog Location” that you may enable. Catalog Date will show you the date of 2020 catalog file at the time an item was placed. This may be helpful to determine when you placed and item on a worksheet. Note that this is different than the manufacturer Price Effective dates, as it only relates to the version of the 2020 catalog. It may be helpful to think of “Catalog Date” as a version number of the catalog from where the item originated. On that same note “Catalog Location” will show you where the item was located in the catalog. Note that this may change if a manufacturer choose to reorganize their catalog hierarchy in a future update.
(3) Assign
The Assign feature allows you to mass assign a worksheet field a specific value. You may access this tool by selecting “Assign” from the Edit menu. Assign is a straightforward tool where you check the column to edit, enter the value you would like to be in that column and click OK. If you only need to do this for a few items you may check the “Assign only to select items” box.
(4) Price Adjustments
I often catch people inserting a blank “Item” in a worksheet and typing a fixed cost description into the “Part Description” field. Price Adjustments are another way to add fixed costs like “Freight” and a superior way to add calculated costs like “Sales Tax”. From the Item menu select Insert and then “Price Adjustment”. In the description field enter the name of the adjustment. Then select the type of adjustment, whether it is a “Fixed-Amount” or a “Percent”. On the Next screen you will be able to select whether this is a charge or a credit. The adjustment will appear at the bottom of your worksheet.
(5) Option Clipboard
Global Options can be a great way to option large projects in a quick manner, but what if you want to target a few items and precisely copy options from one to the next? The Option Clipboard works similar to the clipboard in Microsoft Word. From the View menu select “Task Pane” and then “Option Clipboard”. The Clipboard should appear on the right side of the Worksheet window (by default). Select a fully optioned item on your worksheet and click the “Copy” button on the Option Clipboard. You should see the item’s options appear on the clipboard. Select another like item on the worksheet and click Paste. You just saved yourself extra clicks optioning that item!
I hope you find these tips helpful!
Can you think of any other features that have saved you time on a project? Please share below.
Topic: Custom Backsplash
I often have a backsplash with more complexity that just standard tile. It will have some sort of design or accent thrown in. I have in the past exported my 2020 drawing to Photoshop and then overlaid the backsplash to give a visual for my customer, but I would like to do this through 2020, so I don’t have to keep doing it for every perspective and so it can be seen in room viewer also. Does anyone have any tips on how to do this?
