Window Studio is a graphical design application that allows users to quickly and easily create designs of Andersen Windows and Patio Doors. It was developed by The Weidt Group for Andersen Windows to support the architectural design and construction community with integrated product information and CADD (Computer Aided Drafting and Design) support.

Window Studio’s graphical interface allows a user to drag, drop, and stretch Andersen products as they create robust and highly accurate window and patio door designs for residential and commercial buildings. Several graphical design layout tools allow users to create the layouts they desire while they account for other architectural elements such as roof lines, columns, and specific spacing between products. Once created, users can quickly and easily generate illustrations of their design for construction documentation and plans.

When Window Studio was first released back in 1995, it set the bar for Architectural design support from a window manufacturer. Due to both its popularity and forward thinking design, it continues to be the most sophisticated and functional application of its kind.

Andersen Windows’ Virtual Products

Though Window Studio touts a robust graphical user interface, its real power comes from what’s under the hood. Unlike most other product design applications built atop large databases and configuration logic trees (what we call the “Brute Force” method), Window Studio was built atop virtual models of Andersen window and patio door products. These Virtual Product models are not mere graphical models, but are instead behavioral models that can stand in as functional proxies of the real products themselves inside an application.

Virtual products know what they can be, and can become anything that can be manufactured and shipped. They manifest the products composition, geometry, and actual rules of manufacturability. And because Virtual Products are models, they can also provide calculated or derived data that is impossible to reference empirically, such as derived weight, shipped size, and product performance results calculated for a specified context. Such information can be supplied even if the configured product is of a custom size or complex configuration.

This approach is a sharp contrast to “product configurators” that interpret empirical data stored in databases and logic trees. Such data is only useful when it is externally interpreted and interpretation logic is rarely reusable for other purposes. Virtual Products on the other hand manifest configuration logic, derived data calculations, user interaction support, and on-the-fly generation of visualizations and other data, all within a self-contained and reusable “model”.

In Window Studio, the application itself and its graphical user interface know nothing about specific Andersen Windows products. Instead, it knows how to “talk” to Andersen Windows Virtual Products. This means that as product changes and updates are made to the Virtual Products, changes are not typically required to the Window Studio application itself.

Virtual Product Reuse

After all, whether you’re talking about a design application, quoting system, order capture system, or automated manufacturing system, at the heart of nearly every product based software application lies a configuration system. So, with Virtual Product models of Andersen’s products as a super-configurator, Andersen was able to quickly leverage the models’ utility for other product based applications.

Window Symbols is an online web site that delivers generated illustrations of specially configured Andersen Windows products. This web site has a dynamic HTML based interface that sits atop the same Virtual Products residing under the Window Studio hood.

Another Andersen Windows application that leverages their Virtual Products, is the Window Centrics Wall Planner. This is an interactive web-based application that allows consumers and other designers to create inspirational designs using Andersen products placed in residential settings.