Release 3.8

Customer support and training
provides opportunity for retention

One focus for this release is ensuring you have an ever expanding array of support, training and marketing resources. With that, I’m pleased to talk about our newly launched interactive training videos on the Openings Studio Knowledge Base.

Specification writers, consultants and other internal users can now access these videos, which help to explain how to create projects in Openings Studio in a self-paced and step-by-step process to get aunique interactive experience of the program.

Our team is hard-at-work on some really cool new tools, including an add-in for Graphisoft® ARCHICAD®. The add-in is an alpha release, and if you’re interested in targeted testing, talk to your BIM consultant. This, and other items currently in development, are sure to change not only the way we write specifications, but how we interact with clients long into the future. Be on the look out for announcements from our team in the months to come.

If you have questions about this release, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your local BIM Manager or Openings Studio Consultant.

Cheers,
Paul Candy
Global Director of BIM Technologies

New features:

Alpha Release Graphisoft® ARCHICAD® add-in available for targeted testing

We’re excited to announce that the alpha candidate of the Openings Studio add-in for ARCHICAD® is now available for targeted testing with customers. You may begin to notice some subtle changes to Openings Studio, such as in the new user invitation workflow below. If you’re interested in testing with a potential customer, contact your BIM consultant to find out how to nominate your customer for this exicting development!

User Invite work flow updated, Graphisoft® ARCHICAD® option added

User invitations have been updated to make it easier for architects and others to walk through installing Openings Studio™. 

PDF Viewer Enhancements

Searching for openings in floor plans and PDFs just got a lot easier! Open and search for openings easily within uploaded PDF Plan Views with the updated PDF Viewer.

Design Standards added to the Product Details Screen 

Design Standards are a new permission-based project type, which is now available on the Project Details Screen. Design Standards apply to a specific facility or National Account. This typically involves collaboration with a building owner to discuss the door and hardware requirements for most or all door applications in the facilities. See information on Design Standards and libraries.

Price Adjustments

The most significant change to the Price Adjustment tool is related to how the discounts are applied to products. Previously, the discount worked by adding discounts together, but now it is a multiplier. Discounts are subtracted from the total price as you go down the product tree. Once the discounts have been applied, the items that have a discount will be expanded to show the percentage applied, when you return to the screen. Projects that have discounts applied before the 3.8 Release will retain original pricing. However, you can go into the Price Adjustments screen and have the discounts recalculated automatically.

Ability to add attachments and models to custom hardware

Updates have been made to the ability to save Custom Hardware. This will allow users to create personal hardware libraries across projects, while maintaining attachments and hardware models. This library will not be accessible by other users. See the video Creating and assigning hardware sets for detailed information about the creating and using custom hardware.

Read-Only Access Project Notification

This notification serves as a reminder that users are accessing a project that is currently in use.

Power added to column visibility for Products Screen

Products can now be classified as Powered with a new option in Column Visibility for the Products Screen.