I would like to see a poll on how many framers actually make the cut/clip art a part of their days sales. I have found that in my 8 years of working with CMC's that 80- 90% of all designs that are cut are configurations of rectangles and ovals.
I recently did some statistical analysis with data that some of our customers elected to share, and found that ~77% of mat designs that were cut were single opening rectangles and ovals. That number is much lower than any of us here expected (I personally thought it was around 90%). And maybe not very surprising was the next most popular template of ours - 312, the oval-in-a-rectangle opening.
Why do many CMC vendors write software that has a separate program for single opening mats versus multi-opening mats? Isn't a single opening mat just a multi-opening mat with one opening? Why do some CMC vendors create a crevasse between these two types of mats - the root file formats are even different.
Part of this comes because a single opening design interface is much easier to code - you don't have to worry about all the other stuff required for multiple opening layouts - so most CMC vendors starting out write a single opening app just to get started. That's how it happened at Wizard at least - the first multi-opening tool for us was basically a CAD macro. Of course, the primary computer OS was still DOS back then.
We have since moved to one file format though...
But the real reason to have a simple single opening mode is speed. Since 77% or more of framer's time is cutting a single opening, they only need to enter a minimum of 3 numbers to create a mat (opening or outside width and height, and the borders). And a single opening mode tends to be easier and more intuitive for most framers.
And not to mention that a sigificant portion of our user base were originally trained to use a single opening mode. Many things found in our software today are there because they started that way and we wanted to maintain a modest level of familiarity, even though they could possibly be implemented better or in a different way.
The problem is that the files created by the CMC vendor are saved in a custom file format designed by that CMC vendor. They only work on machines built by that CMC vendor. They keep you locked in to that vendor for years to come.
Of course... when good software is a competitive advantage of a hardware company, you don't want that software supporting competitor's hardware. Especially in this industry, where all future software upgrades for CMCs are free. A company would have to charge a sigificant amount of money for the software to recoup the loss of a hardware sale.
Its the same reason why Apple, even though they are now moving to Intel chips, will still prevent OSX from running on non-Apple boxes. They're a hardware company.
Personally, I'd love to see our software running everywhere for every machine. But I haven't been the one responsible for selling over 4000 machines, so they don't leave decisions like that up to me..
Why don't any of the industry leading trade magazines have an independent lab set-up for evaluating CMC's for the framing industry?
I think this reason is about trying to stay neutral as possible. I suspect the CMC and POS companies represent a non-trvial amount of advertising dollars, and magazines in this industry need to play it safe. And lets face it, all CMC units combined sold in the US probably don't even break the 6,000 mark.
At least Mike's site does a great job of cataloging and comparing all the different CMC and POS vendors. When I first talked to Mike about it I said then I was surprised that none of the trade rags maintained any lists like that. I'm also surprised he hasn't added Google AdSense to his pages with all the hits he's getting..
Good post Mark... and if you'd like the most recent set of our custom design tools, shoot me an email..