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Can someone explain to me where to find the Franke catalog that 2020 lists on its product page as an available catalog. I don’t see it in the cloud or available for download.
Second – I’ve become rather tired of all the half complete (if even that) catalogs. Saying you have a catalog available for a manufacturer and listing 4-5 skus from them does not constitute having their catalog.
For instance I have a client in Manhattan that needs several appartment sized appliances. Why does Bosch sell but its not included in the 2020 catalog: B09IB91NSP or B10CB81SS? Or Frigidaire showing 2 electric ranges and 2 OTR microwaves when they offer 10 OTRS, 19 Gas Ranges and 23 Electric Ranges. Seems so far from complete it almost feels insulting for it to be listed on the site as a vendor catalog offered. What do I need from Frigidaire? Well if we could get everything added that would be great but at the very least they are one of only a few companies that have a 24 electric or gas range and a matching 24″ OTR microwave. FFEH2422US, FCE2425AS, FFGH2422US and UMV1422US. All those skus would be great to add.
There was also a time when GE had all of its skus available on 2020 but seems those days have passed. And further if I wanted to use say a washer dryer stacked you could place the washer machine and under add-ons select the dryer you wanted and it would be stacked to the proper height in 2020 for designing spaces with either a W/D unit in the kitchen or separate Laundry Rooms.
Kohler’s Catalog is severely lacking and seems to have a number of bugs with each and every release. In order to be Kitchen & Bath design program 2020 has no choice but to provide plumbing catalogs. If you’re not going to provide multiple national brand catalogs (ie. Rohl, Delta, Brizo, American Standard, Toto, Duravit, Elkay, Moen, Blanco, etc) the one you choose to have better be amazing and comprehensive. But its not. You can place a showerhead sliding bar but in some cases can’t place a handshower in it. You can place a hydro rail system Kohler offers but can’t add the showerhead to usually. (None shows up in the add-on options like it had originally when the catalog first introduced the sku).
You can easily look at the ELKAY downloaded catalog to see the joke that’s there for kitchen sinks. They offer 100s of sinks – I understand that but to not have a variety of sizes and collections (ie. Crosstown, Dayton, Lustertone and Quartz) just seems like cheating. It’s like you are just adding vendors to say you have them in your software but then when you customers go to these catalogs they have 4 or 6 options to select from, from a vendor that offers 100s.
Hopefully you can commit a team or individual to evaluate these catalogs carefully because as I mentioned in a previous post many of the cloud catalogs had the appliances all entered at the incorrect dimensions. And since you’ve taken away the consumers ability to change these values with the cloud feature – we can no longer fix the sloppiness of the engineers and companies hired to make catalogs. And the mistakes that were or are there, are insulting. No dishwasher, beverage center, wine refrigerator or undercounter appliance in American cabinetry would EVER be above 34-1/2″ tall. It doesn’t happen and even if it did it would be .00002% of the time. Which again leads me to believe those types of errors on those catalogs are just simply from a failure of management to review anything before it goes “live”. And if reviewed and not caught – well some people should go to training on American Kitchen Design since that’s the market you are trying to serve.
I hate to complain but when a company wants to raise prices and increase revenue streams – but has yet to even fulfill the earlier promises or deliver a program that is 100% of what is offered – I feel its necessary to point out the failures and missed opportunities because they ultimately are so easy to achieve and close to your grasp that if actually done – would make consumers very eagerly hand over the $1500 per seat per year.
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Hi Jonathan,
Your feedback was well received. We continuously work with different manufacturers to provide our customers the most up to date content as possible.
One advantage of our cloud content availability is that these new item updates are continuous & on-going, so stay tuned as we continue to update our cloud content.
Thank you
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Pasquale,
Certainly. I had decided that it was something best mentioned and brought up since I haven’t really seen it addressed by others recently or before. For 2020 to provide value to it’s clients and continue building those relationships – it should be a top priority to build quality catalogs that include a breadth of the products offered by the various vendors to avoid tarnishing either brand.
I thought about this some more and I suppose the easiest way to supplement and prevent the gaps from appearing would be for 2020 to further develop your own generic appliance and plumbing catalogs. The shapes are lacking for sure and it would be wonderful if those two catalogs could see a refresh and include things like:
Appliance Catalog:
Microwave Drawer
24″ Range (one that looks nicer than basic – see Bertazzoni, Frigidaire, Fisher & Paykel or Blomberg) Need to have Electric and Gas
24″ Over the Range Microwave (See Frigidaire’s offering or Haier)
Plumbing Catalog
Shower Doors w. Clamps
Freestanding Tub Filler (Contemporary and Transitional Options)
Updated Lavatory Faucets*
Updated Shower & Bath Trim / Fixtures*
Medicine Cabinets
*With perhaps the finishes more realistic then the grey they are now
Handshowers
And a WOW thing to finally add – would be an easier way for designers of bathrooms to depict and create design plans for installers of the tile. Currently I place each tile, one by one when the shape is possible to do so. When not, I find myself printing elevations as PDFs and then using Illustrator to quickly mock up the tile. The day that 2020 can finally show tile and allow for the grout spacing to be adjusted and offer a variety of pattern to be selected to use – will be the day that I think 2020 has finally created a Comprehensive Design Solution.
Thanks for listening to my rambles. And for doing all you do to incorporate the various ideas in each new iteration of the software.
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Pasquale,
It’s really almost an impossible list to create. It would be better to let you know what catalogs you have that are complete or at least in the 90-100% range.
I’ll give some examples of issues:
1. Franke is listed as a vendor on your site that you have a catalog for. I don’t see it as a US Customer either in the cloud or for download. And if what Mike says is true – it sounds like it needs to be more comprehensive. 2020 is definitely limited when it comes to undermount sink sizes. The Kohler Kitchen catalog has the best functionality in terms of how it was set up – the sink is an attachment and the faucet can be attached to the sink attachment. It’s clean and simple.
2. Kohler Kitchen – I can basically only use the Undertone undermount stainless sinks. Things like the Vault or the 8 degree have graphical issues. The Strive collection when you place it its fine, but then add the faucet attachment and it goes and positions itself in the left corner of the sink and you can’t adjust it because once you try to you start duplicating the sink and further graphical errors begin.
3. Kohler Bathroom – The catalog itself is missing so many items and while I understand Kohler has a very large product offering – my recommendation then would be for them to include complete collections at the very least. For example: Also MANY of their items in the catalog (that’s already limited to start) don’t work or show correctly. For example: K-14791-CP is a handshower holder. You go and place it and it goes on no problem. You go to the attributes and you can use an add on to select the hose but it doesn’t allow you to add or select a handshower. About 2 years ago this item worked flawlessly and I had saved the catalog that it worked in. But other items didn’t work. Eventually I got so fed up when I had 3 different Kohler catalogs installed just to get through one bathroom I deleted them all and now only have the most current catalog. Another example: K-45906 again doesn’t allow you to add a handshower so the unit looks ridiculous but worse is they included one shower head. Just one. And many of my clients don’t want a 10″ rainhead shower head they want standard sized ones with good pressure. But instead I can only show this unit with the rainshower head.
Then other issues with the catalog include – when you select brushed nickel as the finish the fixtures glow like they have been victims of nuclear radiation when you go and do a high resolution render. So I only use chrome these days.
All of that doesn’t take into account that there’s not many faucets to choose from or at least the full offering of any one collection. So when you sit down and even try to design a bathroom – you end up using the same parts over and ver again even though each bathroom is rather different from the next but it’s impossible to convey that to clients because it’s not in my tools to do so. Yes I’ve used sketchup for some things but not everything is there either and when it is, and when it works, it’s normally so complicated or large of a file that two items can significantly slow down the program and renders.
NOTE: More of a sidenote but I’ve asked before without any answer – why when I select appliances from the top toolbar under items and “insert” Thermador doesn’t show up. Thermador or the B/S/H catalog only shows when you go through the local browser. Seems odd – did they not pay enough to be included with the rest of the appliances?
4. Sub Zero Wolf catalog – you can only access the COVE dishwasher through the local browser not in the appliance pop-up menu that Thermador is excluded from as mentioned above.
I’m sure that the appliance manufacturers aren’t too quick to want to make the investment for offering their full line of products in their 2020 catalogs but even if they supplied brand “generic” models that had the proper sizing I would almost give them a pass.
There are so many issues it shouldn’t be the customer’s responsibility to inform the company of them – a few mistakes here at there no problem but at this point is just seems like half-baked catalogs coming out of the oven are a common and accepted thing. Someone there should be versed well enough or capable to look through each vendor – understand the offering and evaluate the line and then the catalog. If someone went through each line and made sure that the attachments all worked.
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Hi Pasquale,
I think we all appreciate that it is sometimes difficult to keep up with the appliance manufacturers but it does seem to be a major omission that your competitors are addressing. As an example, your Franke (UK) range is OK but missing a significant portion fo the range. Just one example are the BOX (BWX) options. There are plenty of the same item with colour variations but not enough products – if we can change the colours ourselves, why not focus on getting the full range and leave the colour selection to us.It would also be helpful to see when you last updated a manufacturer’s range.
From an Australian/European perspective, we would like (in order of priority)
Kitchen Plumbing: Franke, Clark/Dorf/Caroma, Oliveri, Abey, Faucet Stromen, Hansgrohe, Fienza
Kitchen Appliances: Miele, Bosch, Panasonic, Smeg, Fisher Paykel, Blanco, Ilve, Falcon, Gaggenau, NeffBut again, whichever brand you work on needs to be complete and not missing a substantial portion fo the range.
Also helpful would be some size and colour adjustable generic appliances with a modern feel – ovens, cooktops and sinks.
Cheers
Mike
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