Configura-April-2011

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Rendering created in CET Designer by Melissa DeAngelis, IIDA

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Try CET Designer for free at www.configura.com/cet.

We’ll get you started! Call us at 877-238-0808.

April learning opportunities Free webinars for anyone, whether a beginner or advanced user. Please call 877-568-4106 and use code 671-407-662 and join by clicking on “Join Webinar Now” at www.configura.com/cet/training.

Special April Webinar: Improving Performance and Speed With CET Designer – FREE Learn the settings, techniques and tricks in CET Designer that speed up performance. This webinar reviews the various settings and offers great tips to make CET Designer work fast! The webinar also covers the techniques for handling large projects and graphically intensive drawings.

April 12, 11-12 Noon EST April 18, 3-4 pm EST April 25, 11-12 Noon EST See our complete list of free webinars – including free on-demand webinars – at www.configura.com/cet/training.

Regularly Scheduled Webinars in April: Getting Started with CET Designer – FREE April 11, 11-12 Noon EST and April 19, 3-4 pm EST

Using the Project Symbols Extension – FREE April 14, 11-12 Noon EST and April 25, 2-3 pm EST

Upcoming Events: CET Designer Academy, Grand Rapids, MI Classes These two-day Beginner and Advanced classes in CET Designer are interactive and hands-on. The cost is $300 per two-day session and includes course materials.

Beginner Class Advanced Class April 5-6 April 7-8 May 10-11 May 12-13 June 21-22 June 23-24

Regional Training for Haworth and Steelcase users 2-day Beginner and Advanced classes, $100/person Week of April 18 - Atlanta Week of May 23 - New York Week of July 11 - Chicago (More dates and locations announced soon)

Annual CET Designer User Conference Venetian Palazzo Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada - Oct 26-27

Special Promotions: If you have 5 or more CET licenses, we will come to your dealership to lead a training session for $1000!

If you have a new user attend a CET 2-day class in 2011, they can receive a free trial license during Neocon week for the rest of 2011!

Contact tracy.lanning@configura.com for more information.

Meet CET Designer user Melissa DeAngelis, IIDA, creator of our April rendering As the Director of Design for Young Office, a Steelcase dealer in Greenville, South Carolina, Melissa brings more than 12 years of commercial interiors experience to the team. Her design responsibilities include programming, space planning, specification and finish selection. She works closely with the Young Office Workplace Consultant and the end user to provide interior solutions designed to meet clients’ needs. Melissa designs spaces for a number of different industries, including manufacturing, corporate, healthcare and hospitality. She’s been using CET Designer for more than a year and has benefited from both the Basic and Advanced classes.

Meet Amy Edington, Training & Support Specialist/Interior Designer Amy has been on the Configura team for three years. She supports all current manufacturers from Configura’s Grand Rapids, Michigan, office. Plus, she travels throughout North America, training CET Designer users in their respective Steelcase, Haworth, Teknion or KI Extensions.

Amy’s passionate about teaching and sharing knowledge. “CET Designer is changing the way people work. It’s enabling designers to be more creative and give the best possible solutions to their client. There is no longer any question about what design a client is getting, because what they get with CET Designer is so accurate and so visual!” she says.

AMY’S FAVORITE PART OF HER WORK: “I love meeting with designers and sales people to evoke change in their sales and order process.

Being able to communicate well with your client is so important, and having an easy tool to work with makes your job so much more fun.”

Amy’s favorite time of the year is summer when she often heads up to Northern Michigan, visiting with family and friends and enjoying the state’s gorgeous beaches. Here in Grand Rapids, you’ll find her playing on volleyball and softball leagues in her free time.

Simplify

in April by optimizing the performance of your hardware when

using CET Designer. Learn more by calling into one of our free April webinars!

April’s Featured Tips CET Designer is a graphically intense program. As a result, we have high hardware systems recommendations, which can be found on our website at http://www.configura.com/cet/systemrequirements.

CET Designer has two different “engine” options for running the software: Advanced Engine and Simple Engine.

If your hardware supports it, you can run the Advanced Engine, which allows you to use advanced tools such as Panoramic Backgrounds and the CET Movie Studio Extension for creating walk-thru videos. The Advanced Engine also offers increased performance in speed and rendering as it can leverage the power of your graphics card.

To test your computer’s hardware, go to your Control Panel, Views tab, and the Graphic Engine Selection button. You will now have an option to run the System Test to see if you can run the Advanced Engine.

Generally, if you get a 50% or higher rating on the system test, you should be able to run the Advanced Engine, but it depends on your specific hardware.

If you get a lower test result, then choose to run the Simple Engine, or you may have performance issues.

There are other settings to check to ensure a speedy performance when using CET Designer: • Use External Process for Photorealistic Renderings, which is also a setting in the Graphics Engine Selection in the Control Panel. This will create a separate “process” that is rendering only, outside of the CET Designer program.

• Enable Realtime Lights option is found on the Views tab of the Control Panel and on the 3D Material tab. If you have this box checked, you get to preview your added lighting levels from spotlights and gridlights in unrendered (working) mode, but it will be a drain on the overall computer performance. We suggest you uncheck that box to increase speed and enhance performance.

• If you are working with the Simple Engine, choose a Low or Medium Open GL detail level in the CET control panel. This will decrease the quality of the 3D image in working mode but will not affect the rendered quality image. This setting is found in the Control Panel and the Views tab.

• It is possible that your anti-virus program is slowing down or buffering CET Designer, especially during updates and when opening the program. To check if this is the case, go into your Task Manager when CET Designer is running and look for other processes besides CETRT.EXE or CETRenderserver.exe that are using the CPU. If you see other applications whose memory is fluctuating very fast, then this could be a sign that CET Designer is being buffered or scanned by an active anti-virus program. To fix this, ask your IT manager to add an exception for CETRT.exe and CETRenderServer.exe.