Each object you create and place in a room will eventually need to be fully described by selecting a product or products for it and recording the associated specifications for them. In FF&EZ, the selected products are called "components." A component is any product from a particular manufacturer—such as a chair frame, carpet or drapery hardware—which is required to fully define an object and that is ordered with a separate purchase order. Many objects will only have one component (for example, a lamp table is just one item, the table itself). Others may have two or more components (for instance, a lamp could have a separate shade ordered from another manufacturer and a bulb from yet another). Components do not have to be just items in a catalog. Example: A component of some objects might be "installation" when installation of the item is done by a separate vendor, with the price set to the "installation per unit" for the object. Example: The "primary" component of custom window treatment may not actually be a catalog product, but the "fabrication" of the drapery from your specifications. A component can also be an "image only" specification, which only appears on illustrated reports when a single specification needs more than one image, but does not generate an order. Creating a Specification There are four ways you can create a specification (although some are just variations of the basic Add command on the Specification List form):
Note: If you create a specification this way, you should also use Save/Object instead of simply Save to either 1) create an object to which to attach it (especially if it's a primary product like a chair frame) or 2) attach it to an existing object (if it is a secondary component). Remember that specifications can only be used as part of an object. It is the object that is placed in a room.
Adding a Specification to an Object Specifications by themselves don't accomplish much until they are used. That is, they need to become part of an object as one of its components. There are three ways to add a specification to an object:
You can either add a "placeholder" (skeleton) specification with descriptions that match the object, or you can select an existing (or add a new) fully detailed specification. If you anticipate that the object will include an additional component (typically for COM), you can use the fields on the right side to add a second component in the same way. Note that the fields for a secondary component do not pre-fill with default information from the object the way the primary component fields do. If you have defined prototype templates in the Library List for certain Spec ID groups (the prefix portion of the Spec ID), those templates will be copied automatically as part of a new placeholder spec, unless you deselect the "Use available prototype" option (this option is selected automatically when a match is found among the prototype templates). If you use the "attach existing" option and use the New button to add a specification (so it becomes an "existing" one), you will have the same options of importing specifications or using a template that you have when adding a specification on the Specifications list screen itself.
After selecting the object that you want to change, simply click on the Component List (the list is a separate table, so you don't actually have to click on Edit to access it). To add a component to the list, select it from the "Select product spec to use" drop-down list and indicate a quantity. Then select the Attach button to add it to the list or the Replace button to replace the currently highlighted component. Remember that the first component added to an object is considered to be the "primary" component, that is, the one that most defines what the object is. If the spec you need to add doesn't exist, use the small New button to add it to the list, then select it. Note that if you use the New button, you are simply calling the Specification Form in Add mode, so everything that you can do when adding a spec directly you can also do with this method, including importing it. Selecting either of these two versions of this command will display the Create/Modify Object dialog box, which offers two ways to use the selected specification: either creating a new object using the spec as the primary component, or modifying an existing object. The first method might be used when you are simply creating a few miscellaneous specifications for a client, while the second method implies that the objects already exist, as they would if you were developing an existing set of objects. For creating a new object, the object's tag defaults to be the same as the Spec ID, but only if that object does not already exist. If it does exist, you will need to supply a unique Tag to use for the new object.. If you are modifying an existing object, you can either add the spec as the primary component (if it has no components yet), add it as an additional component or replace any existing component with it. In both cases, you also have the option of actually placing the resulting object in a room. This last feature would be most likely used when doing "quick" specifications or when adding final items, such as accessories, to a design. |