Softtech V6 Implementation

What we are finding is that the biggest part of implementation is figuring out how to set everything up. When we purchased the software, we bought the 3 seat minimum and they anticipated we would need to do a 1 week scoping session and then two one week training sessions.When I met with Carl for our scoping session, I gave him a tour of our facilities and an overview of what we had set up so far. Based on what he was seeing, he felt we could probably dispense with the scoping session and start right in on explaining the software. We spent the week geeking out in my office talking about all of the possibilities of how you can set things up. Every day when I would go home I felt like my head was ready to explode. Anyone walking by my office probably thought we were from another planet.So let’s take an example so you can relate to the issue. For our systems, all of our gaskets are made in frames (molded corners). Kawneer, who is one of the main people behind the development of this software, really only use lineal gaskets, so the program doesn’t have any specific functionality for this issue.

So we began discussing how to deal with this. The first idea was to create a nested frame that could be inserted into the daylight opening that would contain the inside gasket, the outside gasket and the glass. This solution seemed to work fine. We had to create a macro that would run right after the frame was built to automatically insert the nested frames into every specific light opening.

So, we had the beginnings of a solution. Now, like everything, the devil is in the details. So, what if there is a structurally glazed mullion somewhere in the opening? What if we want the molded gasket to span across both lites in this instance? What happens at structurally glazed corners? What if the interior gasket is molded and the exterior gasket isn’t (pressure wall systems)? How do we handle the mark numbers? They should really match the glass mark numbers to make the key sheets easier to create and manage.

So we started creating macros to help with this. We added an attribute to the vertical mullion assemblies to define if they were structural or captured. We then created a substitution matrix to look up what gaskets should be used in what situation. We then wrote some code on the nested frames to read the attributes on the verticals, look in the matrix and then apply the correct gaskets.

This got us to about an 80% solution. We then started adding more code to address the other 20%. In the mean time, we started doing some testing. Our first test project had a segmented wall with about 50 segments and 3 floors tall. When we tried to create the opening, all of the macros and attributes and matrix information started to kick in. The program began to slow and pretty soon, the computer came to a crawl and the program crashed. Just too much data to crunch. Worked great on smaller storefront openings, just couldn’t scale with the size of work and openings that we do.