Dan McCarty, owner of QA Graphics, has built a distinguished career on the foundation of his expertise in process automation, 3D design, and over 17 years of experience in BAS graphic design. Under his leadership, QA Graphics has grown into a premier provider of BAS graphic outsourcing services, employing a team of 18 dedicated professionals. Dan is passionate about delivering top-tier graphic services to the BAS industry and maintaining outsourcing opportunities within the United States, demonstrating his commitment to enhancing industry standards and supporting domestic talent.
The Challenge: Equipment and products are increasingly more difficult to visualize for marketing, sales, and training.
The Goal:To create photo-realistic 3D graphical representations. Whether you have parametric models or photos as the starting point. QA Graphics can accurately transform your product into 3D graphics with exploded views, animations, and cutaways. Saving you time and money versus other costly concepts.
The Results: Customer are delivered photo realistic models/videos for sales, marketing, training, and stakeholder presentations that effectively illustrate your product.
Make your design become a reality. Contact us to learn more and see examples.
Visually Appealing Design
Using a state-of-the-art rendering software, we provide fast, professional, and cost effective platforms for marketing and sales presentations.
3D Rendering Video & Motion Graphics 3D Modeling
It’s much easier to work on equipment when…
you have a solid idea of how the internal process looks and works. This allows for workers to safely conduct maintenance when fully trained and an impressive piece for trade shows when equipment is to large to transport. Let QA Graphics help you and your team visualize your ideas. Contact us today.
Above is an example of our Template one, Bronze Package. This includes a monochromatic floor with medium definition of doors and stairs in grey tones and includes walls, doors, stairs, and elevators.
QA Graphics has become a fixture in the commercial building industry. Over the past decade, customers have been utilizing their professional design services providing premium floor plans. The 3D floor plans are integrated into building automation systems. The quality of this design has been a key driver toward the continued high standards of work that leads to lasting relationships and recurrent business.
Recently a company operating in the Temperature Control and Building Automation business based in Missouri, looked to QA Graphics to complete a series of floor plan contracts. What attracted them to QA Graphics was the appealing finished product they provide with 3D floor plan work. The product offering creates eye pleasing graphics for the end customer to use for graphical representation of their HVAC and overall building performance. A key performance metric is showing equipment location and use of thermal graphic overlays to quickly locate problem areas.
When asked about working with QA Graphics the Control System Applications Engineer and Systems Integrator, Matt Cafazza said, “The QA team has been great to work with. They have been very cooperative in helping resolve issues through the whole course of the project. The Graphics packages they have been delivering is impressive and easy to navigate. We have been pleased with the time of turnaround, and complete delivered packages. The follow up after deployment has been excellent as well.”
QA Graphics provides professional floor plan graphic development for those who do not have the resources or time to create them. QA Graphics can take existing AutoCAD files, PDFs, sketches, or anything with an image and provide professional floor plan graphics. The design team can provide drafting solutions in 2D, 3D, and photorealistic design. Floor plan graphics can range from simple, basic, or complex and include the building details such as zoning, windows, built-ins, railings, etc. Floor plan graphic projects are provided with fast turnarounds, typically less than 7 business days. To view examples, visit http://www.qagraphics.com/bas-design/floorplans.
Dan McCarty, founder of the Ankeny-based company QA Graphics.
Technology inside the Ankeny offices of QA Graphics are used in projects for companies across the country.
So when Ankeny-native Dan McCarty got an opportunity to help his hometown, he jumped at it.
Ankeny-native Dan McCarty started QA Graphics—an interactive design studio that offers web development, energy dashboards, virtual reality, 3D design and animation—with one full-time employee in 2006. A decade later QA Graphics has 19 employees and has been profitable for the last five years.
“Companies like us, there are a few companies on the coast that do some of this but they can’t even compete with us,” McCarty says. “And we have the same high-end equipment that everyone else has.”
Working globally, and locally
McCarty says he could never imagine having his company based anywhere else but his hometown.
Then came the Prairie Trail project in Ankeny, an Urban development project on 1,031 acres.
McCarty said QA Graphics used 3D designs so potential tenants could view properties along the Prairie Trail with photo-realistic views to help in the decision-making process. YouTube videos can be paused and rotated to view different angles and perspectives.
The final products allowed anyone wanting to see The Prairie Trail project in a 3D perspective.
“They are outselling their space to national retailers, but for those people it’s hard for them to visualize and get here,” McCarty says. “So we did this entire site map, 3D of all of Prairie Trail.
“It’s great and we’ve done it for a ton of other companies. We just applied that locally.”
‘I wasn’t a good employee’
McCarty started his career in sales and in the food processing industry. He admits that he probably wasn’t the best employee and always had an interest in 3D and interactive software.
“There were a couple other companies doing it, I just thought I could do it better,” McCarty says. “I’ve applied some of what I learned and some of those things to this industry. They were ahead of the game in that industry and the building animation industry was way behind.”
McCarty says his 3D developers are versatile and that the developers don’t really care what the project is.
“It’s a pretty powerful thing to have,” he says. ”
Now that it’s been over a decade, McCarty says it’s challenging finding qualified people and keeping them. He says he’s thankful for Des Moines Area Community College and Iowa State University as a talent pool.
“It’s a grind,” McCarty says. “You are constantly finding new people, maintaining customers and keeping up with technology. We have no investors and sometimes it can weigh on you, but overall I would do it again in a second.”
Company Name: QA Graphics Established: 2006 Leadership: Dan McCarty, President Headquarters: Ankeny Website: qagraphics.com
Innovative Companies: 3-D, with a mission
The Problem: A bad kidney and the need for health insurance. Dan McCarty had both. To top it off, he recognized a need in the commercial building industry for easy-to-follow, highly detailed 3-D renderings that would help control building automation systems.
The Innovation: In 2006, McCarty started QA Graphics, a company that created 3-D images of a range of operating systems – think lighting, heating, ventilation and air conditioning – and collected the data generated from those systems for easy display on a dashboard. The company created a web-based interface to help understand all of that hardware.
How They Did It: McCarty is a former salesman for Autodesk Inc., the creator of AutoCad 3-D design software. He spent 13 years working for other companies and, he is quick to admit, putting a strain on their health insurance policies because of kidney issues. His first transplant was 15 years ago, his second was Aug. 2. “I was uninsurable,” he said. As a result, he started his own company. It was a good transition.
“I saw an opportunity in the commercial building industry, mostly in building automation. They were lacking a good user interface – graphics for an operator to easily navigate a building,” he said.
He brought a crew of specialists on board, starting out with a staff of three. QA Graphics created two design departments – graphics outsourcing and creative design. The company has a full-time staff of 12 people that includes engineers, mechanical engineers and architects. The majority of the company’s customers come from out of state, seeking the lower billing rates that could be found in the Midwest. Most of QA Graphics’ competitors are located on the coasts.
“Our rents aren’t as high. We have a highly educated workforce. We are not expensive,” he said.
Though most of the work came from out of state, some heavy hitters such as Hy-Vee Inc., Iowa State University and DuPont Pioneer were among local clients.
The 3-D animation is the core business. QA Graphics uses software and computer systems that would be right at home in a gaming operation, possibly the only other practical application.
“Unless you go into gaming, there just aren’t a whole lot of places where you can do something like this,” McCarty said.
The company has many “offshoots,” he said, such as digital dashboard, animations, supplying materials for marketers who need a visual image or video to give clients an idea of what they are buying, in the case of sophisticated machinery, or leasing, in the case of commercial real estate.
“As technology gets harder to do and it gets more expensive, a lot of companies are outsourcing the things that they do,” McCarty said.
His company is doing everything in-house.
The payoff: In 2013, QA Graphics, with revenues of $2.3 million, was recognized by Inc. magazine as one of the 5,000 fastest-growing companies in the nation. These days, it helps commercial real estate brokers, owners and developers market their properties. McCarty says potential for growth in commercial real estate and other markets is practically limitless. And by the way, QA Graphics has “great health insurance. You have to,” he said.
This article and photo was orignally was posted by the Des Moines Business Record and written by Kent Darr.
QA Graphics is happy to announce the hiring of Zach Olson as the newest BAS Graphic Specialist.
In this position, Zach will be developing graphical screens for the controls industry using control company specific automation software, staying familiar with the latest graphic design techniques for the major building control companies, and helping develop and maintain standards and procedures for developing graphical screens. He will also keep up-to-date on all the latest visualization software releases, keep accurate and organized project notes, and provide customer support for graphical issues as needed.
Originally from, Odebolt, IA, Zach has a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from Iowa State University. Prior to joining the QA Graphics team, he worked as a Shipping and Receiving Personnel at the ISU Bookstore.
When Zach is not at work he enjoys cooking, comedians, jamming out to his favorite bands, and ISU football games to name a few.
QA Graphics is excited to welcome Zach to the team!
