Design Flex Reviews

Summary: Time-intensive, not recommended for highly professional architectural presentations. Good for a quick kitchen layout.

Positive: Fast if using a generic catalog, or for a quick pricing exercise. Immediate updates in all views when designing in 2D.

Negative: Too many catalog issues to list, but the most egregious problem is dimension instability, ongoing for the last several versions. Every time a design is reopened, or a wall examined, or a wall dimension adjusted, dimensions jump out of place, as do notes, lines, etc. High quality rendering difficult to achieve. Missing many crucial abilities, such as architectural detailing.

Summary: I've been using 2020 for over 30 years and it seems to have similar issues with cutting out unexpectedly and having to redraw your design. I know it has an auto save feature but this slows the designing process way down so I opt to take the chance. When it's slow you know to hit save often before it cuts out on you.

Positive: It's the only design soft ware I use, details in colors and cabinetry is great!
Pricing is great.
Perspective views are great.

Negative: I get kicked out of 2020 often when in a design process and find myself having to redo what I had done in the first place. Auto save slows the design process.

Summary: Frustrating. I spend a considerable amount of time correcting, looking for work-arounds, tweaking things to get as close as possible to accurate drawings that are representative of what a client is actually getting. The clients want to see accuracy and the company I work for demands it, because these drawings become part of a legal and binding contract. PLEASE fix the dimension issues! And PLEASE give us generic appliances and plumbing fixtures that can be modified to show accurate dimensions. PLEASE. PLEASE. PLEASE.

Positive: Generally, there are many things that work well, however, the things that don't, mainly dimensions and appliances/plumbing products work very poorly.

Negative: Dimensions. They used to work well. Now I spend a considerable amount of time correcting them. There are too many dimension-related issues to outline here. Appliances/Plumbing fixtures. For the brands you partner with, the designs are so full of lines that it looks too busy on the page and the images usually over-lap the cabinet image. For those products you don't have available, and there are many, most of the generics cannot be modified to show accurate sizing; and those that can be modified are horribly out of date as a visual. Renderings. They used to work better, too. Now, if I I'm too close to an island, the perimeter countertop doesn't show, if I pull away far enough to get the countertop to show, the wall of the room will be in the way, blocking the view. My issue with support is that the only way support can try to address some of the issues I have (such as when I produce a rendering, it prints to a pdf as a blank page) is to get into areas of the computer that I can't give them access to because the owner of our company will not give the workers his ADMIM password; and he is certainly not going to sit for long periods of time while they try to figure it out. Then, they'll often make recommendations that inevitably cost him money after he's already provided a state of the art, very expensive computer. They'll often say he needs a new graphic card when he just invested on getting an excellent graphic card. I can't even call support anymore because it's pointless if I can't give them admin access. This software should be set up so that admin access isn't necessary to keep things running smoothly. I can't even clear out the temporary file cache without admin permission!!

Summary: I struggled and wasted a lot of time trying to do quick turnarounds for customer designs. Those program is not user friendly, nothing is instinctive. I hate this software. It doesn't give me the results I need.

Positive: I liked having access to real products and having direct means to create invoices. It was fun to pull in accessories and views. I liked working in one companies product catalog and having the direct connection to the kitchen cabinet company.

Negative: The software is clunky and not user friendly. I started working with computers more than 35 years ago. I used Autocad since it was DOS. I've worked with Autocad, SketchUp and Photoshop and other 3-d programs that don't exist anymore. This is by far the most awkward, buggy, clumsy program I've ever worked in. I can't create a second floor or an exterior view. If I don't predraw on paper every measurement before I start a model, I end up trying to fix it for an hour. The basic 2020 catalogs don't even have a pure white quartz or even attractive, modern choices. Customizing furnishings is severely limited. Moving furniture or cabinets especially is ridiculous. I try to move a product and it won't move the small amount I need to finish the design.

Summary: 2020 keeps getting worse. Fix the issues before trying to make it better. It's never been perfect but it shouldn't get harder to use.

Positive: Rendering have improved. Realistic images have gotten better. Lighting is easier to work with. Cloud is easier to work with.

Negative: 2020 has been more unstable and crashes much more frequently since being forced to go to the digital key. Catalogs are unstable and don't work with upgraded versions. 2020 cloud will fail more often than not. I don't like the constant ask for upgrade of versions. I don't like how it randomly signs you out.

Summary: I am frustrated with 2020. It is too expensive to cause the amount of frustration it does. I am considering switching over to another product.

Positive: I know how to use this program and when it works it does create beautiful renderings. It is a helpful tool in selling kitchens and bathroom.

Negative: Program likes to crash unexpectedly.
I don't always have an internet connection, which makes working with a "live" online program frustrating. There is no way to show a framed inset cabinet.

Summary: I work with this program almost every day and every day something frustrates me about it. There are not enough texture options for things like floor and cabinets. I can't find a way to show hickory cabinetry. We do custom kitchens and the program is just not up to par with that. It's very hard to give customers accurate renderings with this program. I wish it was easier to get more catalogs in the program because I still don't fully understand how to do that and I have wasted so much time trying.

Positive: Gets the job done. If you need something for simple kitchens this program works great. If you are in to custom kitchens the program is a pain to work with.

Negative: Lots of glitches. The cloud is confusing. Customizations is limited especially when working with angles.

Summary: Not a great program.
Dimensions do not stay in place.
Always have to add hand written items as 2020 does not enter them properly or the dimensions move.
Overall, the color rendering are extremely time consuming and are not good enough.

Positive: Hidden line drawings.
Floor plans.
Cabinet manufacturer catalogs.
Not too many positive things to say about 2020 Design Live.

Negative: Renderings are not comparable to other similar products.
Pricing is very high and renewal increases yearly with no additional support.
Does not integrate well with other programs.
Not user friendly.
Renderings are not good enough in color.
Lighting.
Ease of use.
Constant crashing.
Dimensions are not good enough.

Summary: Not happy with the program overall.

It has the basics but thats about it and the price is completely outrageous for a program like this. They get away with charging it because they have a monopoly on this industry.

Positive: It has the basic options needed to do a bathroom or kitchen design.

The black and white pictures under presentation are pretty decent.

Negative: Freezes and shuts down in the middle of a design.
Takes way too long to open when you first start.
The pictures under presentation come out too dark and the light feature doesn't work.
Too many extra unneeded dimensions show and you have to take the time to delete them.
The appliance options are very limited and many are very outdated - looks like appliances from maybe the 70s era?
way too expensive for the quality you're getting.

Summary: I've been using this program since 2003. It's a bad program. It's Frustrating. How many hours of work have I lost because it crashes? It must be somewhere around a day's work at the end of the work. -Usually when you're in the middle of a complicated custom project! If your internet skips a beat the program crashes. They say it will run two days without wifi. The actual length of time is minutes. Not days

Positive: Many cabinet companies program 2020 with their prices, although the prices are not to be considered accurate.

Negative: It's slow, crashes frequently, with poor quality renderings considering today's tech. It's loaded down with tons of stuff a kitchen designer will never use, but has far too little of what we do need for the typical design....
The only reason they stay in business is to be certified" by NKBA means you need to pass their test, which basically tests the skill of using 2020 not your skill as a designer.
And you have to BUY IT EVERY YEAR and EVERY YEAR IT GOES UP IN PRICE. UGH!!!!!!!!!!!

Summary: Scam at trade show beware, no one ever called us back for training, lost all our investment.
Never used, they never called us.

Positive: I was sold a false promised and purchased without knowing it was a script in with no training at the beginning of Covid .. lost $1700 without even a call back , lost all my money.

Negative: You can’t love something you don’t know how to use.

Summary: Overpriced and lacks open functionality for catalogs. There should be a monthly subscription option as all users are not only kitchen designers and the cost is not worth if for 10 ad hoc kitchen designs per year. Unfortunately I would not use it for other areas of design due to the instability and cost.

Positive: My initial use of 2020 was impressive, but the only value that I can truly identify is that the tool allows for error and collision alerts in which is beneficial.

Negative: The tool crashes constantly and impacts the work performed. Some designs are auto saved and recovered while others are completely lost. Within the years that I have used this tool it has been the most unsatisfying tool ever. Having experienced 100 crashes and sending crash report has never prompted support to contact me. What's the point of the system asking if you want to send a crash report when sending the report generates no aid in my direct assistance. The catalog restrictions are a nuisance whereas other software does not restrict access. It doesn't make any sense that catalogs are restricted unless you're a dealer for the brand, because unless you're a dealer you can't order anyway. The tool is way overpriced for what it offers, and I would love for a new company to put 2020 to bed. Overpriced and lacks stability and functionality of open catalogs.