Vitro Architectural Glass adds 3-part spec feature to “Construct” Tool

Vitro Architectural Glass (formerly PPG Glass) has added a new feature to the Vitro Glass “Construct” tool that enables users to quickly generate 3-part specifications in the Construction Specifiers Institute (CSI) format, which is the basis for all building construction documentation in North America.

 

Architects, glazing contractors, glass fabricators and building professionals currently use the Vitro Glass Construct tool to search, construct and compare virtual configurations for monolithic glazings, multi-pane insulating glass units (IGUs), decorative glasses and spandrel glasses.

The new feature permits them to generate, with a single keystroke or mouse-click, industry-standard 3-part CSI specifications for any such configuration they create using the Construct tool, as long as it contains 100-percent Vitro Glass products.

 

Steve Marino, technical support manager, Vitro Architectural Glass, said the spec-generation feature is the first of its kind in the glass industry.

“Our Construct tool is widely used because it enables architects and industry professionals to save time by comparing multiple glazing configurations online for performance and aesthetics,” he said. “The new feature makes the Construct tool even more versatile and valuable by instantly generating required construction documents for those configurations as well.”



The 3-part CSI specification lists performance data for individual glazing configurations such as glass thickness, visible light transmittance (VLT), interior and exterior reflectance, winter nighttime u-value, solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) and light-to-solar gain (LSG) ratio.

It also contains descriptions for the glass products used in the glazing configuration, along with related certification standards, testing and compliance requirements, sourcing information and more.

 

The Vitro Glass Construct tool incorporates several other exclusive features to create the most comprehensive and easy-to-use online specification instrument in the glass industry, including:

• Password-free access to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) International Glazing Database (IGDB)—North America’s largest, most accurate and most trusted repository of glass-product performance data—for use with the WINDOW 7.3 software.
• The ability to customize reports according to user-defined criteria, and to personalize them with the name of a building project, the logo of the architectural firm and other user-provided artwork.

To learn more about generating 3-part specifications with the Vitro Glass Construct tool, visit www.vitroglazings.com.