JMW Professional Engineers, PC provides engineering consulting and design services for mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems to commercial, industrial and institutional clients. Based in Irvington, Virginia, JMW offers multi-disciplinary facility expertise that includes specialized services to optimize energy conservation, improve indoor air quality and reduce building humidity levels.
J. Mosby West, P.E., the business owner, has been a Design Master user since 2007. JMW currently has licenses for Design Master Electrical, Design Master HVAC and Design Master Plumbing. “All my work is repeat customers, and I have more business than I can handle,” says Mr. West. “Design Master lets me produce higher-quality drawings in less time than my competitors. If you put out a good product at a good price, you’re going to get more work.”
“The Design Master products make my flow of work much faster and more efficient,” Mr. West continues. “Design Master simplifies the design process because it takes care of so many things automatically. It lets me focus my attention on the design, rather than developing the documentation and tracking calculations.”
“For example, with Design Master Plumbing I no longer have to worry about drawing isometrics and getting them just right. Design Master draws the isometric for me right from the plan view with a couple of mouse clicks. If the floor plan changes, I can redraw the isometric in seconds. That is a huge benefit to me.
“Another great thing about the Design Master products is that if you make a change somewhere on a drawing that affects other drawings or other areas of a drawing, the software recalculates all those dependencies for you. For example, if you add a receptacle to an electrical circuit, Design Master Electrical automatically updates the panel board schedule—and if that panel board is fed from another panel board, it changes the loads in that schedule, too. If a change bumps you up to the next wire size, it handles that for you also.”
“The Design Master programs work entirely within AutoCAD, which simplifies the whole design process,” adds Mr. West. “Now I no longer need to import and export data from other programs, or re-enter building information.”
“For example, before I got Design Master HVAC I used another program to do cooling load calculations. I had to enter all the building data into that other program. Now I can do those calculations much quicker and more easily, right in AutoCAD.
“Similarly, Design Master handles all my indoor, point-to-point photometric calculations beautifully. Prior to that I had to use another software package for photometrics, which required me to drag information in and out of AutoCAD. Now I can just set everything up and do the calculations within AutoCAD.”
“On top of having really good software, Design Master’s customer support is second to none,” Mr. West relates. “They’re very responsive to customers’ needs. For example, if you email them with an issue they’ll generally respond within an hour. You can even send them your project file and they’ll diagnose a problem for you that way. And they’re receptive to suggestions about product enhancements.”
Mr. West continues: “I’ve tried using AutoCAD MEP and it’s so complicated… It tries to do what Design Master does but Design Master does it so much better. I’m not a computer jockey—I’m an engineer. I don’t have time to dig through manuals trying to figure out simple things like how to hatch my ductwork. Besides, AutoCAD doesn’t have the support capabilities that Design Master does.”
Whether you’re one person working across multiple engineering disciplines or part of a team designing MEP systems, Design Master can streamline and simplify your work. “Say you’re working on a building and you start with the lighting layout,” Mr. West explains. “Then the HVAC guy needs to figure out where he’s going to put his supply grilles and returns in that same ceiling. With Design Master, he can simply import the lighting fixture layout and view the light fixtures in his drawings.”
“Design Master saves me time every day, so I can work more efficiently and accomplish more with less effort,” asserts Mr. West. “It also eliminates a lot of the busy-work. If you do any design work at all, a Design Master subscription is money well spent—especially as you use more of the tools it makes available to you.
“Doing what I do wouldn’t be as much fun without Design Master, I can tell you that,” Mr. West concludes.
