Software solution CET Designer is changing the industry
Configura held its biannual partner meeting on March 15 with more than 50 people from major office furniture manufacturing companies attending to talk about Configura’s space-planning solution. All of Configura’s top executives from headquarters in Sweden, and from the company’s Malaysia and Grand Rapids offices, joined with representatives from Dekko, Haworth, Herman Miller, Inscape, KI, Kimball, Midmark, OFS, Steelcase and Teknion for the meeting hosted by Configura in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Configura makes CET Designer, intelligent design and specification software invested in by each of these manufacturers and used by their dealers around the globe.
“If you look at the culture of Configura and our partners, you see that we come together with a mutual goal of solving the problem of selling configurable system products. Meetings like this help us to talk about the possibilities with the software. We all benefit by sharing and learning from each other,” CEO Johan Lyreborn said.
Offering a look at CET Designer 7.0 and 7.5
At the meeting, Configura Chief Product Officer Nicklas Dagersten shared some of the updates that the May 16 release of CET Designer 7.0 will include, many centered around the visualization capabilities that users want.
Virtual Viewer is a CET Designer Extension for demo purposes that will enable users to “walk around” a drawing in full-screen mode using gaming controls. Meanwhile, Virtual Reality for CET Designer combines Configura’s technology with Oculus Rift glasses to give customers an immersive, virtual experience of a designed space. First demo’ed last June at NeoCon, the VR Extension will go live this summer when Oculus Rift releases its glasses from beta.
“The users who have tried VR love it,” Dagersten said. “It’s the future of experiencing a designed space.”
Also coming with CET Designer 7.0 is the ability to accelerate the rendering process. Dubbed Render Accelerator, this Extension to CET Designer works as a “cluster” – when a user clicks the render button in CET Designer, it uses the power of all nearby connected computers instead of just the user’s computer, making the time to render incredibly fast.
Configura also will release new and improved accessories symbols – including plants, flowers and kitchenettes – to enhance the realism of renderings. CET Designer’s SketchUp Extension will be improved to enable users to download symbols from SketchUp’s 3D Warehouse directly into CET Designer. Work Modes in CET Designer will enable manufacturers to tailor the user interface depending on needs.
Configura will continue to focus on visualization capabilities with its CET Designer 7.5 release, scheduled for November. This release is planned to include a version of VR that works with lower-end headsets. Configura also will continue to improve the realism of images and add more functionality to the rendering engine.
“We’ll be demo’ing many of these capabilities at NeoCon this June in Chicago,” Vice President of Global Customer Experience Tracy Lanning said.
About Configura
Configura creates intelligent space-planning software for manufacturers, dealers and designers in the Contract Furniture, Kitchen and Bath, Material Handling, Industrial Machinery, and Laboratory and Healthcare industries. The company’s software products, including CET Designer®, are used by more than 10,000 people around the world. Configura Sverige AB, the parent company, is headquartered in Linköping, Sweden, with commercial operations in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Founded in 1990, Configura is privately owned with more than 90 employees worldwide and annual sales of more than $10 million USD. More information at www.configura.com.
About CET Designer®
Based on technology created by Configura, CET Designer® is intelligent, highly visual and intuitive space-planning software that simplifies specifying and selling of products in a variety of industries. It’s a complete solution that quickly and accurately handles every step of the sales and order process. In CET Designer®, components that represent manufacturers’ products look and behave like actual products. Users drag and drop components into 2D and 3D virtual environments; behind the scenes, the software tracks components, calculates pricing and prevents user errors. Users can create and generate layouts, quotes, photorealistic renderings, movies, installation drawings, reconfigurations and bills of materials – in other words, everything needed to propose on work and place orders. CET Designer® is the future of space planning. More information at www.configura.com/cet.