AVAproject users can now import files created by the Assa Abloy Openings Studio specification writing software, directly into their projects.

Assa Abloy owns many of the most popular and recognizable brands in the architectural hardware industry. Brands such as Sargent, Yale, Ceco, Curries, McKinney, Corbin-Russwin and so many others make up their rich product portfolio. AVAware proudly offers electronic versions of all these product price books for use with the AVAproject detailing and estimating system.

Like most major manufacturers, Assa Abloy maintains a team of specification writers in an effort to provide door and hardware specs to many of the industry's leading architects.

Specifications are created using a piece of proprietary software called, "Openings Studio," which also enables Assa Abloy specification writers to provide exported data (in the form of .JSON or delimited .TXT files) for use by their distributor partners.

Over the past year, AVAware has seen growing interest among Assa Abloy distributors wanting to know if it's possible to make use of Openings Studio export files to facilitate the creation of project estimates and submittals. In response, AVAware created a comprehensive import tool that is able to read Openings Studio created JSON & TXT files, and convert them to AVAproject format in a matter of seconds.

Users need only select the file provided by Assa Abloy, and AVAproject does the rest. Hardware sets, openings and other related information is brought into a standard project.

The following is a brief list of some of the special features of the import process:

• Hardware sets complete with product details and notes are brought into AVAproject as "Hardware Groups", and automatically linked to their associated openings in the Openings Schedules.
• Openings are brought in complete with individual leaf sizes and thicknesses, handing, opening numbers, "to & froms" and other miscellaneous data.
• A comprehensive Hardware List of the various hardware products used throughout the hardware sets is created, with "short codes" automatically assigned to them. A "Usage" column in the Hardware List provides an instant reference to which sets each item appears in.
• Product information such as dates, numbers, contacts and other miscellaneous details are harvested from the import file and placed into their corresponding AVAproject fields.

Absolutely no effort was spared in the creation of the import module. Every possible detail has been meticulously extracted from the Openings Studio file and preserved in its AVAproject counterpart.

The Openings Studio import will be a standard feature offered in AVAproject, commencing with the upcoming Autumn 2022 release. In the interim, AVAproject users in possession of Openings Studio export files can forward them to their AVAware support representatives to have them imported and returned in an AVAproject compatible format.

On June 16, 2022 National Guard Products, Inc. (NGP) announced their acquisition of Anemostat Door Products. Headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, Anemostat is a leading manufacturer of steel lite kits, louvers and glazing products.

AVAware has been asked by NGP to discontinue distribution of the current Anemostat price book, as they have already instructed Anemostat to cease quoting products for the time being.

NGP has indicated their intention to transition Anemostat product manufacturing to their facility in Memphis, Tennessee by the end of the summer. Those products will eventually be incorporated into the NGP product catalog.

The plan is to phase in the various product offerings over the next few months. AVAproject users can expect to see them included in subsequent updates to the NGP catalog as they are released.

For the time being, NGP has indicated that the following Anemostat products will be available starting in August and will be priced the same as their corresponding NGP models.

A new 'NGP' catalog containing these product additions is now available to AVAproject users that are currently subscribed to Division-8 Hardware.

For additional information on NGP, please visit their new website at: https://www.ngp.com

In only a few short years, Andrew expanded his technical repertoire to application development and spearheaded the design and implementation of many of the key infrastructure components that AVAware continues to rely on to this day.

Andrew's keen sense of discipline, undoubtedly cultivated during his tenure with the Canadian military, and technical ability have seen him grow into a brilliant developer that AVAware is proud to have leading its development team.

Most notably, Andrew is responsible for leading development efforts on AVAproject Fusion, its associated accounting/ERP integration modules and the AVAware Plugin for Autodesk^® Revit^®.

For myself, I can only say that I've been truly privileged to have had the opportunity to work with, and perhaps help cultivate, such a talented individual.

Paul Kirsch, President

The AVAproject Fusion custom report generator offers users the ability to create all manner of reports based on the data contained in AVAproject project files. Data can be extracted from material lists, openings, washrooms schedules and hardware groups to create fully customized columnar reports. Reports can be arranged, grouped, sorted and sub-totaled based on virtually any data component, resulting in a myriad of ways in which a single set of data can be visualized.

This tip will focus specifically on sort ordering. Report data can be sorted based on any field or by any number of fields. Even beyond that, the order in which the sort fields are selected can change the report presentation entirely.

The example used below is a simply hardware utilization report that lists hardware items (bulked or not) along with the openings they are associated with. For the purposes of this report, the following series of fields were selected for the report:

In the selection below the field list, another list of fields determines the manner in which the data will be sorted. In this case, based on:

The order in which the fields are listed dictates the order in which the data is sorted. In this case, the data is first sorted into groups by manufacturer (the first sort order field). Within each manufacturer, those items are then sub-sorted by description (second sort order field). Finally, items within each manufacturer/description group are sorted by opening number (the final sort order field). The end result is the report pictured below:

The very same data can be expressed differently however, simply by changing the order in which the data is sorted.

By manipulating sort order as well as additional grouping options offered by AVAproject Fusion, reports can easily be reshaped to accommodate a variety of applications, from order to installation guides, without modifying the base report data.

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