Design Canvas

The Design Canvas is where a window is described. You pick a layout, set the sizes, choose the system and colour, and the rest of the application works from what you drew.

It is reached from inside a lead, not from the main menu. The routes are lead/window/add/:pId to add a window to a lead and lead/window/update/:pId/:itemId to edit one.

Add a window to a lead

Select layout dialog, at lead/window/add/:pId. Placeholder image.

1. Open the lead and save its contact information first. The window screens need a lead to attach to.
2. Select Add window.
3. The Select layout dialog opens with the layouts loaded in Config, Window layouts. Choose the one that matches the opening.
4. The layout editing screen opens with that layout drawn.

If the shape you need is not offered, it has not been loaded. Someone with Config access has to add it under Config, Window layouts. You cannot draw an arbitrary shape from scratch on this screen.

Edit the window

Window layout editing, at lead/window/update/:pId/:itemId. Placeholder image.

Work through the window, setting:

• Arch reference, your own reference for this opening. Use the one on the drawing, because it is what ties this window back to the architect’s plan and it carries through to work orders.
• Layout and location, where the unit goes on site.
• System, the profile system.
• Item type.
• Colour.
• Width and Height.
• Quantity, where the same unit repeats.

Area is worked out from the sizes rather than typed.

Set width and height in the units your configurations were loaded in. Nothing converts for you, and a window entered in centimetres against millimetre profiles will produce a cost sheet that looks reasonable and is badly wrong.

Change the materials on a window

From the lead view there are dialogs to change what a window is made of without redrawing it:

• Change profile product material
• Change hardware product material
• Change steel product material

Use these when a job needs a substitution, for example a different reinforcement, and you do not want to rebuild the design. The material and cost sheets pick the change up.

Check the design

After drawing, open the lead view and look at two tabs before doing anything else:

1. uPVC window details, which shows the detail behind each window.
2. Material, which shows what the design will consume.

If the material list is empty or much shorter than you expect, the design is fine but the configuration behind it is not. See Loading profile systems.

What this screen is not

It is a layout editor working from a fixed library of layouts, with sizes and materials on top. It does not draw free form shapes, and it does not do structural or thermal calculation. If you need a shape it does not have, add it to the layouts library first.