Essential Install | Smart Thinking : The Cinema Designer
Will Online Solution The Cinema Designer ( TCD ) Revolutionise Cinema Design ?
Alice Gustafson met with Guy Singleton from install company Imagine This to learn how his creation can deliver any custom home cinema design in five minutes .
The new system can create full cinema designs and renders in five minutes !
Officially launching at this month ’ s ISE , TCD has already been hailed as ‘ a stroke of genius ’ by Trinnov Audio , a ‘ game-changer ’ by Bowers & Wilkins and Datasat , with Classé declaring that it is ‘ a total no brainer ’.
TCD is an online design tool that allows users to create cinema designs , support documents and renders , within minutes . EI Witnessed this first hand ; in less than five minutes , TCD completed a full 9.1.4 Dolby Atmos custom cinema design , with downloadable support documents including 3D CAD placement drawings , cinema specification data , a bill of materials and 1920 x 1080 photo quality renders . TCD does in minutes what would typically take around three weeks to create , delivering nine drawings comprised of four isometrics , a top plan , four elevations and a PDF file . TCD can also create a 3D CAD drawing for any room in under 30 seconds and can be used anywhere in the world .
“ I built it for me really ,” says Guy . “ I built it because I knew it could help installers design jobs quickly . Imagine spending a lot of time designing cinemas , which is hours of tendering and producing documentation . For the installer to not win that project , it ’ s a lot of work .
“ I showed it to a few people and they said ‘ it ’ s too good to keep this to yourself ; this could benefit the whole market ’. So I started to think , maybe this will be something the industry will need . I carried on working on it and I remember one Sunday morning I had a bit of a Doc Brown Back To The Future moment when it worked perfectly – from there I didn ’ t look back .”
Guy is quietly optimistic about the take up of the software , as it allows even the smallest of install companies to compete with the largest , confident that the results will be tailor made for any cinema ( including commercial ones with a few tweaks to the system ).
“ Whether it ’ s a one-man band or a team of 100 people , it makes no difference ,” Guy adds . “ It saves all of your past projects so you can access them at any time . You could do three different designs for one cinema with different budgets and let the client chose .”
Installers and CAD designers needn ’ t panic ; TCD is not designed to replace them , they are still very much at the heart of the process . TCD is intended as an addition to a cinema designer ’ s toolkit and , when you get down to it , profit margin , helping save time and money . It ’ s a serious design tool . It isn ’ t a gimmick , it ’ s not an App , it outputs something valuable .
“ The room design is only the start ,” Guy nods . “ CAD guys will still need to layer lighting , power and other features . What it does is takes away the fundamental room set up . In short , it will speed up and simplify their workflow whilst designing rooms to a set standard . The average person can ’ t just design cinemas with this ; this is going to require you having some experience and an understanding of how to make some sense of the numbers .”
How Does It Work ?
Once the user has entered a few basic details , room dimensions and screen size etc ., the software calculates the arithmetical design data and generates design documents in less than a minute . With respected brands such as Bowers & Wilkins , Barco and Screen Research represented in the product database , the tool accurately specifies equipment based on the correct design
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