At the start of a project I would get a set of prints and start laying out the job using colored stick-on dots, red for speakers, blue for phone, green for keypad, and so on. From there I would manually create a proposal line by line, looking up material costs and guestimating on the labor hours. The most advanced tool I had for this job was a spreadsheet. Of course, there would be many changes and redesigns, and I would have to again manually recreate the proposals, pull off the sticky dots and basically start all over.

On a multi-million dollar house project a number of years ago, my first six figure contract, I became convinced that there had to be a better way to manage these jobs. At this level there is no going back if you forget to run a wire, or miss a critical component in the rough-in stage. I didn’t have a very accurate proposal or set of plans and would lay awake at night going over and over all aspects of the project, agonizing over the possibility of having missed something. One night at 3:00am, I bolted out of bed, realizing that I missed some critical audio cables between headends that were separated by a cement wall. Many extra hours were spent fixing this oversight. If only there was a better way.

Like most people in similar design/installation industries, I thought I could learn a simple CAD package over the weekend and this would solve all my problems. I tried QuickCAD, AutoCAD LT, Generic CADD, and some DOS based packages. All promised to be easy-to-use and a short learning curve. After many hours of use I could barely draw a simple box, much less design floor plans and cabinet elevations. At one point I started using MacDraft for Windows, a low end drawing package because it was the only thing I could master. I even tried a couple of industry specific text-based proposal packages, with similar results. All were either to hard to learn, or not right for the job.

At this point I started dreaming of a design package that would allow me to easily draw and document a system and then pull a proposal off the drawing. Where could I find such a package? Did it exist? Why do I always want what I can’t have?

Then two years ago an associate introduced me to Visio Technical 4.0. I immediately picked up on the ease of use, and initially I was happy creating stencils and saving my custom icons for later use. Of course I still had to create my proposals manually but the drawing part was much easier. I knew I was on to something when I met with the CEO of a major software company to discuss upgrading his home theater. After our initial meeting I went back to my office and created a scale, accurate drawing of the equipment rack and a room elevation to go along with the six figure proposal. He took one look at the drawings and said, "that is exactly what I want. When can I start?" He also mentioned that all the other text based proposals were too long and boring, he just wanted a high end theater and somebody who knew what he was doing to install it. I left with a $50,000.00 deposit.

Equipment rack layout created with DigiTools CI

Still I wanted more. I knew there was a lot of power in Visio, I just didn’t know how to tap into it. Visio Technical 5.0 came out about the time I left one job. Instead of going to work immediately for another firm, I decided I would leverage my experience in the residential systems market and my experience with Visio, and see if I could create the design and estimating tool of my dreams. I holed up in my home office for a couple of months figuring out what makes Visio tick. I got deep into the ShapeSheet, database wizard, property export tools and so on. I experimented with all the different ways to automatically create and store shapes. It occurred to me that most items in my industry basically look the same, speakers, VCR’s, power amps, phones etc. The only real differences were size, manufacturer and model. This led to the realization that one shape could represent hundreds of similar SKU’s. Think about it—master shapes based on live data stored in outside tables, easy to update, easy to edit and most important easy for the end user to select.

I took it further. All fonts scale based on the height of the shape and the scale of the drawing. My shapes work at all page sizes and scales. Let’s see AutoCAD do that. Intelligent, custom floor plan icons based on our industry standard shapes and colors that size according to the drawing scale, they are always the correct size. With wire shapes that automatically assume the proper color and line end for that type of wire, end users can’t make a mistake. A shape used for schematics and wiring diagrams that automatically sizes, based on the number of inputs/outputs of the item, adds connection points at the proper intervals and lists the inputs and outputs at each connection point. I spent over 100 hours designing that shape. It is almost magical when I put it to work.

The Room and Zone assignment facility in DigiTools CI adds practical information to the design, right on the "drawing board".

Using Crystal Reports we can create an unlimited number of reports. We are working on an SQL front end so end users can create reports based on the data in the drawings on the fly. When I finish with a drawing I can create a proposal based on variable factors, PO’s, management hour reports and more, from this single drawing. If we encounter any changes during the course of the project it is a simple matter to make the changes to the drawing, create new reports and bill accordingly.

DigiTools CI is a very powerful application that leverages Visio Technical to cut design time, improve accuracy and profitability, and actually helps sell proposals.

DigiTools CI Product Snapshot

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