Zone slicing made easy

The task might sound easy on the face of it, but accurately and efficiently slicing up floor area measurement into zones is a time consuming task that requires high levels of attention.
To do the job accurately, on time and on budget, you need a tool specifically designed for the task, quick to learn, easy to adopt, wrapped within an easy to understand framework able to handle drawings of all types and scales. It needs to be more than a simple file viewer or CAD program and it can’t afford to be a jack-of-all-trades. You’re searching for a specialist application that’s engineered for the task. You need a champion.

You need ZoneMaster™.

Built on the foundations of one, if not the best drawing measurement engines in the marketplace, OnSight™, ZoneMaster™ draws on the over 25 years of experience in the business of drawing measurement encapsulated in a single focused product.
Able to handle all of the common drawing formats found in the industry, user can now effortlessly, and with minimal training, cut-a-swathe through projects with speed, ease and confidence. What was once a time-consuming task can now be dispensed in minutes, not hours.

The industry called – we replied

ZoneMaster™ was developed by demand. Demand for a system that could cut through zoning measurement easily whilst managing different and possibly changing zoning regulations. The system does therefore allow each and every user to customise their zoning methodologies, allowing for ultimate flexibility and future proofing every users investment against a changing market.

The system that can do all the zoning cutting and slicing you’ll ever need, but before all of this happened we focused on one thing – you.
The end–user, the person at the keyboard is the most expensive part of the equation and it was important to our standards of design that we never lost sight of this, after all, making the end-user go fast is what it’s all about. Accuracy and ease of use is a ‘given’, but the active ingredient to commercial success is speed. That’s why, our design rationale put the user at the centre and we built the system around them.

What you want is what you get (wywiwyg)

You want an easy to learn system, one that delivers confidence by the bucket load and makes good on all the promise you know the system has to offer. You want a system that takes the stress and inaccuracies out of the measurement task. You want a system that impresses - impresses yourself, impresses the client, impresses management - after all, you were probably an instigator in the purchase so you want a system that proves you make good recommendations and decisions. You also want to go home on time at the end of the day rather than staying over to catch up.

You want ZoneMaster™

So what does it really do?

In short, it allows you to take accurate speedy measurement from a variety of files, both CAD based AND scanned, even PDF’s, direct from your screen. Projects can even have multiple drawings, even of mixed format and scales - an industry first. So now there’s no need to print any drawings – that’s just time wasted.

Firstly, the user selects one or more drawings and loads them to screen. Scales are set (if needed – true CAD file self scale) and the area(s) to be evaluated are defined. Then things really start to get good. If there are columns obstructing the floor, these can be defined and cut out of the floor area. Likewise, stairs and escalators can be handled in the same ease-to-use approach; even reduced ceiling height areas can easily be defined.

Finally, the front profile of the shop front is then identified including its extents, and ZoneMaster™ does the rest, effortlessly, and instantly segmenting the floor space in the selected zoning bands.

And it can even get easier than this if the architect has already highlighted the key area in a supplied CAD file format. ZoneMaster™ can automatically measure this is the prime area in a single mouse click. It really doesn’t get any easier.

A master ‘picture’ area showing the project in total keeps you in touch with the task as a whole and multiple drawings can be stacked or tiled into the project as needs dictate with the system allowing for floor areas to be cloned from unit to unit and from floor to floor. Duplicated units on multi storey developments really are easy. And if they have minor differences it’s still not a problem – ZoneMaster™ gives you all the tools to make quick tweaks to the measures.

But the system doesn’t stop there. It comes loaded with a host of additional tools for those very complex projects that seem to pop up even now and then. If you have sight line issues, it’s not a problem. ZoneMaster™ allows you to define sight lines and make additional segmented cuts of your floor zones for added value.

These of course are simple tasks and the system is full of additional tools to manage even more complex measures and tasks. The list is impressive even by our high standards but if you need to shrink and/or expand area objects, say to allow for skirtings (as if), it’s a simple task – the tools are already there.

And, if you have other measurement tasks to undertake that don’t involve zoning, the system will undertake these as well – after all, it is built on the world renowned OnSight™ measurement platform, so the measurement world really is your oyster so to speak.

Is it easy to use? You bet!

Using the system is just as easy as you might hope, no knowledge of CAD is required. Load a file, pick a tool, click on the objects corners or ends and watch as the scaled answer is written to the results grid. With CAD files it’s precisely accurate and fast too. It’s like digital tracing but better. ‘Point-click-answer’ is a good way of summing it all up, and, if you do make a mistake, it’s easy to edit.

Flattening the learning curve

But delivering all the new features we’ve built into the latest version is only half the story. Drawing on our experience with our other systems we have enabled our new systems with multimedia based Help rather than a simple flat file help system and paper manuals. Now, instead of fumbling to understand what you need to know, users watch real-time video with narration. Uptake of information is almost immediate and the learning curve is flattened, leveraging more profit from the investment right from day one. No other system is as easy to implement as ZoneMaster™.

Nested layers

Like our other measurement solutions, ZoneMaster™ continues to make use of the well adopted approach of measuring in layers. But even this technique has been re-engineered with unlimited layers and even nested layers (layers within layers) are possible giving yet even more flexibility to a great approach and allowing every user to keep control of a growing take-off, allocating their measures to the right ‘pigeonhole’. You can segment your project by building, floor or even unit-by-unit, the choice is entirely yours.
Teams of users haven’t been overlooked either – all user preferences, common data, styles, descriptions and colours can be stored centrally, allowing the system to deliver uniformity across the team as well as making hot-desking a reality.

3D as standard

Take-off doesn’t stop at 2D though. Even though the plans you’re measuring are ‘flat’, ZoneMaster™ offers every user the ability to develop 3D models right out of the box. You can give your zone take-off real ‘feeling’ by simply adding in walls and ceilings (if you want to make a presentation to key clients) Walls can be effortlessly extruded to give them height and even doors and window openings can be cut! You won’t do it on every project, perhaps you won’t ever do, but when you really want to impress, it’s easy to develop a 3D view of the project without much of a learning curve – we’re kept it simple but it still really works.

Reports, HotLink™ and Excel™

Once you’ve finished your measure, we haven’t forgotten you’ll want to present the answers either, so ZoneMaster™ comes complete with exports to Excel™, picture-rich graphical reports and our dynamic HotLink™ tool allowing all the take-off answers to flow seamlessly into Excel™ for you to post into the cells of your choosing. You can therefore, stay with your current spreadsheet design whilst harnessing ZoneMasters™ take-off power. Dynamic linking takes care of everything, meaning and drawing take-off changes flow seamlessly through into your spreadsheets. It really couldn’t be smoother.

Specialist hardware

And to make users even more efficient, ZoneMaster™ supports twin-screen set-ups as standard, allowing non essential tools to be moved to a second screen making way for bigger drawings and therefore less zooming/panning, speeding up the user and forcing even more efficiency from the system. But the engineering doesn’t stop there, ZoneMaster™ is also out-of-the-box ready for a selection of wide screen hi-definition touch-screen monitors squeezing even greater returns from the investment (up to twice as fast). If you want to stay with a simple single screen set-up, that’s fine, but ZoneMaster™ is ready to take you further up the efficiency ladder as soon as you’re ready.

ZoneMaster™ - taking you to the next level.

ZoneMaster™

Retail space zoning measurement software