American Bevel Designer II CAD Program

Rating:
Summary: Awesome, powerful program!!
Review: I have been a professional glass artist for approximately 30 years and have seen all kinds of changes in this industry. I have never used patterns designed by anyone else, so all my designs started from scratch. My boxes of old patterns were stacked in a corner of my warehouse. Like every designer, there are certain elements I have used and adapted over and over. Since each design I do is one of a kind, I had to draw these elements each and every time. I'm sure this sounds familiar. I am also not a product of the computer age. I saw this program for the first time 10 years ago at a glass trade show and was incredibly impressed with what it could do. I saw borders appear almost instantly, flowers being duplicated, turned, twisted, resized, rotated and recolored at the click of a mouse. I saw elements moved around a screen using a drag technique. I saw whole patterns resized to scale instantly. Quite frankly, it scared me to death. I never thought I could do it. I was wrong. I will admit that there was a learning curve which was made easier by the fact that I knew other graphics software such as Illustrator and Photoshop and the toolbox was essentially the same. Once I learned that I could save design elements I had designed onto a palette for reuse and reshaping, life became incredibly easy. I scanned my old designs into my computer and stored them... sometimes design element by design element. Because of this feature I never have to redraw the flowers, or any other design element I always use. My biggest fear in doing a commission was always whether the window would really fit at installation time. Now, everything is drawn to exact scale and I never have to fear that again. As my design palettes increase in number, my design time shrinks proportionally. A wonderful added feature on this program is that all of American Bevel Inc.'s clusters are already drawn in, locked to scale. Straight line bevels of all sizes are also on palettes, locked to scale. This enables me to do the very popular beveled glass piece in record time. Also on one of the palettes are all the different sized border leads so that scale is assured. This program also uses glass scans of the most popular glass companies. This allows me to show my customers their windows totally finished, including the glass to be used, before I ever lift a cutter or buy a piece of glass. This is so helpful for people who can't visualize drawings into reality and eliminates disappointment on installation. You can even take a photo of the space that the window will go into and insert the finished window design into it for them to see. Over 100 free video tutorials covering every aspect of this program are available for downloading from American Bevel's website in case you get stuck anywhere. This is an absolutely awesome program that has given me the ability to design quickly and make very, very professional presentations. My suggestion? Buy it!