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Test Fit vs Space Plan: Floor Plans for Commercial Real Estate
At some point, you may have heard the term “Test Fit” or “Space Plan” in relation to building floor plans. These are standard methods used to help develop commercial real estate. The difference between the two comes down to the level of detail included. We know how vital it is to capture the attention of prospective tenants. That is why we provide cost-effective graphic solutions to market and sell your commercial space.
Test Fit
A Test Fit helps confirm the requirements needed for your space, allowing you to determine if it will be able to accommodate the number of rooms your office needs.
The example provided includes simple furniture and dimensions, with medium grey tone floors, white walls, and sharply defined doors and stairs. Understanding your company’s needs and growth projections are major factors that go into creating this type of floor plan.
Space Plan
Space Plans emphasize the look and feel of your location, allowing for intricate details. Our design team creates photorealistic 3D graphics to provide a more in-depth look of your floor plan. The graphics define special areas, place furniture, and showcase material textures.
Here, you and your stakeholders get to see the beginning steps of how your space will be presented to others.
To see more examples, visit: https://www.qagraphics.com/floor-plans/
The Rules Are Changing When It Comes To Building Green
Provide Interactive Education
The rules are changing when it comes to building green. Gone are the days of arguing if it is technically feasible or not. It is becoming more and more of a no-brainer to go with conservation as you can see from the results listed below:
The next step in this journey is capitalizing on educating and engaging occupants on your green practices – this ensures successful execution of your energy reduction goals. Incorporating an interactive tool to teach students and other occupants about the green building features and energy efficiency practices bring transparency to the table and is a great educational factor.
Contact us to see how QA Graphics can help you bring your energy features to an interactive dashboard.
NEW – Happy Boards
We are excited to announce a partnership with Happy Medium to bring you, Happy Boards. This customizable communication hub will be installed for you and functional, ensuring your kiosk to be operating and functional while we finalize work on your energy dashboard. Featuring green tips, social media, your LEED score, and more – talk to us to learn more about how the Happy Board will work for you and your Energy Efficiency Education Dashboard®.
Free Specification Writing
An Energy Efficiency Education Dashboard® (EEED) is included in your building specification writing process. When writing a specification for a custom project such as QA Graphics’ EEED you need clear, concise specifications containing the information contractors need to meet LEED® requirements for your energy dashboard.
Let our experienced sales team help you in writing a FREE customized energy dashboard specification to meet the needs of your project.
Figuring Your Dashboard ROI
When you implement an Energy Dashboard you can physically see the savings. Comparing the energy usage from floor to floor or even different buildings on campus.
Some studies have found a potential savings of around 12% can be obtained by involving occupants with your sustainability efforts.
Contact us to get an estimate an estimated ROI calculation.
ROI = ((Energy Cost * .12) – Dashboard Cost)/Dashboard Cost
Zero Energy Schools
Net zero energy status is part of a growing trend for schools. Generally, a building meets the definition of net zero if, through a combination of efficiency and on-site renewable energy, it produces as much energy over the course of a year as it uses.
Placing an Energy Dashboard where students can interact with and learn what initiatives the school is taking. Making the building’s systems transparent and putting sustainability front and center.
QA Graphics Wins 2016 Gold Marcom Award
QA Graphics, a leader in the building automation system (BAS) graphic outsourcing industry, is a recipient of a Gold MarCom Award in app for business category for their UX design of the Taco LCI-4 app. MarCom is one of the oldest, largest and most prestigious creative competitions in the world. Winners are selected from over 300 categories in Print, Web, Video and Strategic Communications worldwide.
QA Graphics has over a decade of experience in UX design and BAS graphics. By working with QA Graphics, Taco Solutions gained: An application with an improved user experience that embraces Taco’s brand standards, a highly-detailed graphics symbol library that depicts Taco’s equipment, and savings in time and money.
MarCom Awards recognizes outstanding achievement by creative professionals involved in the concept, direction, design, and production of marketing and communication materials and programs. Six thousand plus entries come from corporate marketing and communication departments, advertising agencies, PR firms, design shops, production companies and freelancers. Judges are industry professionals who look for companies and individuals whose talent exceeds a high standard of excellence and whose work serves as a benchmark for the industry.
The post-production of this project also provided Taco Comfort Solution’s engineers the ability to refocus their limited time on product functionality, allowing for an overall faster launch for LCI-4. “With consumer-facing products and graphics rapidly advancing in the HVAC industry,” said Dan McCarty, owner, and president of QA Graphics, “we are excited to help companies make that shift to a more premier looking product easier.”
To download a copy of the case study written, visit: https://www.qagraphics.com/taco_case_study/
A list of Platinum and Gold Winners can be found on the MarCom Awards website at www.marcomawards.com.
About QA Graphics – QA Graphics is a leader in the building automation and green building industries. The company specializes in HVAC graphic development services, system graphics, floor plan graphics, and Energy Efficiency Education Dashboards™ (EEEDs). Since 2006, QA Graphics has served as an expert design resource for the building controls industry and is able to provide BAS graphics for any type of building automation. The company also provides marketing solutions such as interactive applications, 3D design and animation, UX design, videos, and more. Visit www.qagraphics.com to learn more.
MarCom Awards
Sponsored and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP), a 22-year-old international organization consisting of several thousand creative professionals. As part of its mission, AMCP fosters and supports the efforts of creative professionals who contribute their unique talents to public service and community organizations. Over the past few years, AMCP has given over $200,000 in charitable contributions.
About Taco Comfort Solutions – Taco Comfort Solutions is a third generation, family owned, American manufacturer of high quality, high efficiency heating, cooling, plumbing, and irrigation products. Headquartered in Cranston, RI, Taco is global in scope with manufacturing facilities in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Arkansas, Ontario, Vietnam, and Italy. Its skilled employees produce precision pumps, valves and controls, air-dirt separators, heat exchangers, tanks, domestic hot water recirculation systems, and web-based building management controls. Visit www.taco-hvac.com to learn more.
To view this press release on PRwebiste visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/11/prweb13813947.htm
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TDIndustries Case Study
Download the PDF version here.
Executive Summary
This report was commissioned to study how QA Graphics worked with TDIndustries to boost the look and feel of their graphics for floor plans.
TD worked with QA Graphics to upgrade their floor plans and system graphics to a higher level that the industry demanded.
By working on their application with QA Graphics, TD gained:
- Floor plans with an updated feel and layers of detail that was needed
- Highly detailed system graphics that depicts the equipment needed
- Savings in time and money
About TDIndustries
For 70 years, TDIndustries has delivered innovative design and high performance of world-class engineered systems which serve healthcare facilities, hotels, schools, mission critical, and industrial complexes. Developing into one of America’s premier mechanical construction and facility service companies, TD is changing the face of the industry through sustainable, state-of-the-art innovations that are a result of first class customer service.
TD has a tremendous core competency in project management of any size due to the unmatched, powerful company resources including: employees, processes, technology and manufacturing expertise. Emphasis on employees and culture, TD partners with clients across the entire life-cycle of a facility from engineering and construction to operations and maintenance. Our corporate culture is based upon the Servant Leader philosophy, which means we do everything alongside our customer.
Challenges
When creating floor plans, TDIndustries previously utilized graphics symbols that came standard with the purchase of Tridium products. Such use of these graphics worked well in its target market. The product’s functionality received passing grades from end users, but outdated aesthetics in regard to look and feel did not meet or exceed the expectations of TD and their customers.
Missing a more rich and dynamic feel for the renders of the building space, TD knew that they needed something more engaging but lacked the in-house capabilities to make their desires a reality. Images often presented themselves as mediocre in quality; while lacking the exact graphical representation TD desired to portray. Customer expectations were on the rise due to a rapidly growing market; while demand for advanced 3D images was becoming front and center.
“Once we searched for 3D HVAC images and saw what QA Graphics had to offer, we knew our graphics were basic and becoming outdated,” said Mike Ohlenburger.
How QA Graphics Helped
TDIndustries utilized QA Graphics’ website to assess how QA Graphics expertise and product offerings could enhance their floor plan graphics. The company chose to work with QA Graphics in efforts to bring their HVAC and floor plan graphics up to speed while competing against the industries best.
Floor Plan
QA Graphics’ CAD Drafters bring a building to life by creating professional, premium floor plan and site plan designs that meet your building specifications, budget, and timeline. Once project specs were set for TD’s vision in what way they requested, QA Graphics drafters went to work on creating detailed floor plans depicting the higher level of detail that TD wanted to portray with their graphics.
QA Graphics created several layers of floor plans to accommodate the varying needs of TD. Varying layers for HVAC , piping, lighting, elevator graphics, animation for security doors, and domestic and hydronic water systems were created. This gave TD Industries the professional look and feel that they were missing out on before to provide to their client. Allowing the team to easily view locations of the varying systems with ease.
TDIndustries provided QA Graphics with Revit files which allowed them to create dynamic renderings of the building’s interior by showcasing material textures, HVAC systems. Combined together this provided TDIndustries with a higher end photo realistic option to bring the project to the next level.
System Graphics
TD also worked with QA Graphics’ 3D designers and Building Automation System (BAS) specialists to update a majority of their symbol library and mechanical equipment graphics. QA Graphics’ symbol library offers static and animated graphics, including unit ventilators, under floor units, tanks, rooftop units, and more.
QA Graphics’ specialists are experts in the BAS graphics industry and worked with TD to build robust system graphics. QA Graphics created a majority of the 3D graphics needed for their project. Their floor plans now feature superior graphic representations of a user’s system, including dynamic graphics, moving fans, and pumping pumps.
Customer Experience
TD loved the ease of the process as QA Graphics worked through the layers and sent updates through their work place system. The company was able to see how the upgrade in graphics created a modern and updated design. QA Graphics’ designers created TDIndustries’ appealing floor plans and system graphics into a presentation piece that TD is proud to display.
When asked about the process and work of QA Graphics, Ohlenburger said, “I think that QA Graphics work space system, Mavenlink, is a great asset for keeping the client in the know of project status and questions that may arise. The customer service of the team was also friendly, easy to work with, and offered good value.”
Post Production
TDIndustries new floor plan for the construction process feature updated graphics that included mechanical component layers, colored units, piping, domestic/hydronic water systems, and more. The design process required very little work to be done on TD’s part. With QA Graphics timeliness, this solved many previous challenges for TD. Allowing their experts to focus on other parts of the building process and spend less time trying to make the graphics look presentable and professional.
TD’s new look for floor plans on this building project gave them something to be proud of and that they want to display to their client. Featuring up-to-date, highly detailed, and accurate representation of their client’s floor plan and HVAC systems. The graphics for the floor plans featured a variety of layers for various BAS systems onsite and background images that outlaid the locations for piping, lighting, security animations, and other. The updated floor plan graphics are better than what TDIndustries could have created without QA Graphics’ expertise, and the design process was more efficient than their current resources.
“Working with a company that produces a nice product at a professional grade in a timely manner was worth the cost of the project. They also had excellent customer support for whenever we had questions,” said Ohlenburger.
About QA Graphics
QA Graphics is a leader in the building automation and green building industries. The company specializes in HVAC graphic development services, system graphics, floor plan graphics, and Energy Efficiency Education Dashboards™ (EEEDs). The company also provides marketing solutions such as interactive applications, 3D design and animation, UX design, videos, and more.
Since 2006, QA Graphics has provided professional premium site plan design and space planning for commercial properties. Offering a variety of floor plan graphics options to meet your specification, budget, and timeline. Using existing AutoCad files, PDF’s, sketches or specifications sheets, QA Graphics creates customized, photo realistic, 3D and 2D floor plan graphics. From basic to complex design, QA Graphics’ high quality floor plan come with quick turnaround times and technical expertise to include building details such as zoning windows, built-ins, railings, furnishings, and more.
Visit www.qagraphics.com to learn more.
Download the PDF version HERE.