Design Flex Reviews

Summary: Once learning the software it has been good to use. For the yearly expense I do wish the Cloud catalog was updated with more current selections.

Positive: It is a good kitchen design program. Pretty straightforward and easy to use. The elevations are great for clients to visualize.

Negative: The selection of lights, tchotchkes, chairs, flowers, accent pieces is very poor. Definitely need more options especially for the yearly cost.

The software lately has been slow especially when using the perspectives.

Summary: I have to use 2020 to do my job. We cannot take the time to switch to ProKitchen and test that out so here we are.
Would love to have 2020 dev team take time to sit with us and learn the issues we constantly face and focus on existing issues, not new features.

Positive: It's the only program we have.
It has my manufacturers catalogs.

Negative: I cannot lock items (like walls) to keep them from being moved by accident.
Crashes regularly (duplicate Sketchup items always causes a crash).
Rendering is finicky and lighting impossible to get right.
cloud items often don't work and are out of style (decorative items).
Many changes have to be done in repetitive and time consuming manner. Instead of having a single button option or automation.

Summary: My experience with 2020 Design Live is bittersweet. I like the program in terms of quickly producing floor plans and rendering kitchen and bathroom designs. However, the program tends to get laggy often and that sometimes hinders how efficient projects get completed.

Positive: -Easy to produce floor plans and renderings
- Produces quality renderings
- Easy to drag and drop objects into floor plan

Negative: -Laggy software
- Needs to provide more objects to add to design
- Needs to provide a better way of adding surfaces such as backsplashes and flooring to designs

Summary: I use 2020 because I have to in order to design and install cabinetry. It gets the job done, but there's a lot of room for improvement.

Positive: 2020 is a great program to assist with designing stock and semi-custom cabinetry and winning jobs and providing work orders for installers. It has a lot of capabilities and most cabinet manufacturers provide catalogs that integrate with 2020.

Negative: The program is not intuitive. It takes a lot of time to learn the ins and outs of operating it smoothly. There are free training resources on youtube which are helpful. However, I feel that they could do a lot more to support designer learning. My biggest beef with 2020 is the cost of the program itself and the cost to attend their training events. Both are outrageous. However they have a bit of a monopoly and can charge what they want. There is no reason to charge the prices they do for providing very low overhead webinar trainings, especially when they're getting $2100/yr just for each license. I also really don't like the way their license key works. If you work from more than one PC you're sure to run into issues when you log in at a different desktop and forgot to log out on the last PC you logged in with. I also don't like how you have to download all of your catalogs on each computer that you use. Invariably the catalogs will end up having different names so if you want to pull up a design you did on one PC on another, it will think they are different catalogs even if it's the same version of the same catalog. Very annoying. It's also glitchy. I frequently have the problem while designing of not being able to select the item (cabinet, measurement, label, etc.) that I want because it often doesn't select the item that your pointer is touching.

Summary: I loved 2020 when I was selling semi custom, large company cabinets. It has been nothing but frustrating now that I am in high end custom.

Positive: Probably works great for semi custom and stock cabinetry. Many catalogs available. Many options for decor, appliances, etc.

Negative: Extremely time consuming to work with full custom cabinetry. Every time there is an update, I have to go back and check all of my settings. Many of the catalogs are a hassle to modify. Its like there is no standard for vendor catalogs because most are terrible at best, unless you are working with one of the big lines.

Summary: I would have liked to had more training to effectively use the program to its fullest. I was able to do preliminary drawings and evaluate layouts.

Positive: I was able to draw up a few things with the program, however, I had no idea how to order and draw in a timely manner.

Negative: I tried to sign up for a couple of the live schools, but, they were filled up every time they came to my area.

Summary: 2020 Design is one of two software options for the cabinet industry that includes manufacturer pricing. I have used the software for well over 20 years. Overall the software has made little changes in the product. That can a be good thing as the interface and features are always familiar with new updates. The down side to the lack of major changes is that problems never seemed to get fixed. The Drawing Layout tool was introduced many years ago, and still has issues some as simple as printing multiple pages. Most of the focus development in the software revolve around improvements/glitches for the rendering engines. A couple years the software was migrated from 32bit to 64bit. The most recent major change was migrated existing users, and onboarding new customers to the subscription based pricing model. This new version introduced the new EZRender rendering module which is quite a bit faster than the previous Redway module. Live version also introduced the Cloud Configurator which allows you to use different door styles/colors easier for the manufacturers that support it. The downside to the newer Live version is it requires users to sign in periodically, and unfortunately their authentication servers have availability issues causing the software to not work.

Does 2020 Design make my job easier to draw and price kitchen/baths? Yes. Do I wish there was a better option in the market? Yes.

Positive: Easy to learn.
Quick design pricing.
Nice renderings.
Decent reporting of cabinet lists.
Customizable interface.

Negative: Frequent crashes & freezing.
Has not changed much in 20 years.
3D panoramas are incredibly slow to render.
Measurements tools need improving.
Presentation tools need improving.

Summary: I find using 2020 Design Live more frustrating than enjoyable and user friendly. Your support team is excellent though and do help out. However for the past week your phone lines have been down to Support so that has been frustrating. I feel your product overall has too many limitations and cannot handle larger designs. Such as kitchens that are 12' x 15'.

Positive: I feel the programs pros are that my cabinet manufacturers have library's here. It makes creating a design for my customers easier having access to the manufacturer's catalogs that we carry.

I use your support team often and find them for the most part excellent at helping me problem solve.

Negative: I don't like how the program shuts down when I am doing mid size to large kitchen designs once I go into perspective renderings. The program seems to get overwhelmed with the content and this is just with cabinetry in the design. If I add accessories and furniture to my designs to make it look better and more relatable to the customer, the program crashes usually. I do continually save my work but this is very annoying. Also, sometimes the program functions just don't work when I am doing larger designs. For example, moving a piece of cabinetry using the placement tool just doesn't work. And I have to shut down the program and start it up again for the feature to work again. I also have a gaming computer that has an excellent graphics card and don't find these problems with other software programs on it like Chief Architect for example. Generally speaking, I do find your program very frustrating most days.

Summary: Not great. Very surprised on how long it takes to load the product onto a desktop logging in and the time lost is detrimental to our company productivity.

Positive: Accessibility from remote locations is a huge plus although we have not utilize that yet. Also, not needing the 2020 key is some thing that we enjoy.

Negative: Product takes way too long to load. It Is very frustrating.

Last Friday there was some sort of issue with the 2020 server, and no one could access for a few hours.

Summary: It is overall good but needs some Improvements with updates, cut and paste option in preferences / catalogs, save options for custom made toolbar and fix lockup / crash issues.

Positive: Excellent graphics, lighting has become better, excellent cloud catalog options and decent interface.

Negative: Too many crashes and lockups.
Unable to easily move new catalogs into folders. Have to move each new catalog up one column at a time and it takes forever. Need a cut and paste option.
Doesn't save my settings (toolbar setup ) when I download a new version of 2020.
Needs a room setting so you can draw each room under a separate tab. Thus being able to have more than one floor plan and not having such a large floorplan with all the rooms on the same page Thus making hard to read.

Summary: Overall I think the program is good - some days are better than others. I don't think going up on the price every year and then having so many tech issues is a good idea - it defers me to look at other programs similar to 2020, however I am familiar with 2020 and not one for change.

Positive: It's a fairly simple program to use. The cloud has a lot of good manufacturer options for drawing, I think it could use more updated lighting and appliances

Negative: Too many errors on opening files, constantly getting messages that it's not loaded properly, too often items in the cloud are deleted or no longer "available" in my designs so I get a message that I need to remove those items.

Summary: Easy to use software at an exorbitant price. I could get by with less features, I would really prefer a basic cabinet design software.

Positive: Relatively easy to use, plenty of catalog options. It is an easy system to learn and there are plenty of resources to help further your knowledge.

Negative: Amazingly overpriced. I hate paying my renewal for this software almost as much as I hate paying taxes. An absolute ripoff in terms of value for dollars spent.

Summary: Not intuitive to use. Clumsy at times. A design software created by a computer security company. Has came a long way.

Positive: Pricing, ability to change design immediately and render quickly. Catalogs from manufacturers. Cloud items.

Negative: Legacy layout and features that need updating in a comprehensive way. Specifically creating quotes.

Summary: The cloud items need updating. The program is still a little buggy. I sincerely wish I didn't "upgrade". It's not worth paying $2,200 US dollars a year for. That part is a joke!

Positive: The availability of manufacturer's catalogs. Their customer support is very good. The EZ render feature.

Negative: Ridiculously overpriced. Cloud items are outdated. Buggy.

Summary: I am not a big fan of 2020 Design. It is user friendly as long as it does not crash or save my projects.

Positive: Initially we bought 2020 in order to design custom kitchens and bathrooms for our clients. It was easy to navigate and we could use the cabinet company we rep for.

Negative: I have had nothing but problems the entire 2 years we have had 2020 with the program crashing and losing all my work. I have contacted Tech Support many times to help me, it would work for a few days and then back to crashing all the time. I would have an entire kitchen almost completed and I would lose everything. I am looking for other programs to replace 2020.