The Design.efficiently platform contains 3 major project components.
Plans (Construction sets or Design Drawings)
Schedule
Design Books (Presentations)
NOTE: We recommend selecting your own test project or current active project to follow along with the below tutorials.
Plans is where project drawings are stored, whether that's construction documents or design drawings.
Upload multiple versions of the construction set as the drawings evolve.
Set the scale and measure off of your drawings.
View your schedule and plans side-by-side without flipping back and forth between tabs.
The Schedule contains all of the detail required for client approval, bidding, procurement, and installation of all project specifications.
Develop the framework of the schedule (rooms, spaces, and locations) by using schedule templates.
Create Item IDs for each of the project locations.
Make design selections (add Items).
Begin to build your schedule framework by utilizing templates:
As you're creating your framework, be sure to save your own templates for later:
Once you've created your Rooms, Spaces, and Locations, you'll begin adding your Item IDs and the Items (design selections):
NOTE: In addition to a catalog of over 5 million items, users are invited to add their own items as well (visible only to members of their org) using our chrome plugin. For more information on adding items to the catalog, see 'Add Items to the Catalog'.
Design Books (Presentations) can be created for any and every phase of the project from the initial conceptual meeting all the way through design development.
Set a default theme that you or anyone from your org can use to keep consistent branding for all design presentations.
Set up item boxes according to your preferences for displaying design selections to clients (the Item Box connects your presentation to the schedule).
Create individual page layouts and book layouts in your theme for consistency and efficiency in future projects.
Create your own theme from scratch or work from one of the Design.efficiently themes:
Explore item boxes, which connect your presentation to the schedule:
Build an item page layout (or template):
Create Book Layouts (or presentation templates):
Next we'll dive deeper into the functionality available to you in the schedule.