Planet Bathrooms, Bedrooms and Kitchens makes first move to CAD with ArtiCAD 

Planet Bathrooms, Bedrooms & Kitchens (formerly known as Bathroom Planet) has installed the ArtiCAD-Pro design product to provide its customers with a more professional design service and to improve its competitive edge.

The choice of ArtiCAD-Pro represents the first time the company has used a CAD product.  Darren Thomson at Planet:  “When the company focused solely on bathrooms, we were able to rely on a very basic VR design product to produce plan views.  However, with our move into supplying bedrooms and kitchens, we needed to be able to produce much more professional 3D designs.

“The economic downturn has slowed the market but we felt that investing in a CAD system could provide us with a competitive edge.  We looked at two alternative products and chose ArtiCAD-Pro because of its ease of use and the quality of the final designs.”

Planet Bathrooms, Bedrooms & Kitchens supplies both direct to consumers and to the KBB trade, and has a bathroom, bedroom and kitchen manufacturing operation, Speyside Furniture.  All the finishes for the Speyside range of furniture have been compiled into a comprehensive graphics catalogue within ArtiCAD-Pro.  Designers can simply select the finish and door style of their choice and drop these into the room design.  Darren Thomson:  “The inclusion of the Speyside range in ArtiCAD-Pro was a key factor in our decision to go ahead – because it makes it so easy to produce extremely professional, product-specific designs quickly and easily for our clients.  The designs we are producing now are in a completely different league.”

Planet Bathrooms, Bedroom and Kitchens is also using the ArtiCAD VR product, which provides real-time walkthroughs of room designs, to complement the ArtiCAD-Pro package.

The twenty-year old family run business is based in Elgin and has the largest showroom in north east Scotland, in Aberdeen.  This showroom is split over two floors, with more than sixty full lifestyle displays, as well as a huge range of bathroom products.  Also on show are several fitted bedrooms and the newly opened kitchen area.  The boutique-style showroom at Elgin has fifteen full size bathroom displays, together with fitted kitchen and bedroom displays.

The company installs about one hundred and fifty bathrooms each year, and supplies more than five times that number.