HomeWorks QS, Designer, Shades and Shade Groups...oh my!

[jkvossen]

Just starting to get into shades and I have a HomeWorks QS (Designer) question:

I'm trying to understand shade groups as it relates to control of individual shades

I'm a bit fuzzy on how to configure shades in Designer WRT providing a good user experience from a control point of view. For example, I have a room that has 3 windows (2 windows on 1 wall, the other on a different wall by itself), which will have drapes and 2 doors, which will have honeycomb shades.

Client would like to have control as follows:

- 1 button to close/open all drapes/shades in the room together
- 1 button to close/open the honeycomb shades on the door
- 1 button to close/open each drape (3 of them) individually
- 1 button to close/open the drapes that are on the 2 windows on one wall
- 1 button to close/open the drape on the other wall

So what's the best way to put these in a group? The 2 windows in one group, the other window in it's own group and the doors in a third group? All in one group? Windows in a group with the door in a group? Every shade/drape in it's own group?

Can a shade/drape be in more than one group?

or am I over-thinking this and that a shade group is simply a "wrapper" around a group of shades that can be controlled together?

thanks!

[Tim S.]

The "shade group" designation is something that was not part of older Homeworks software. It was introduced in HomeworksQS, and was designed for cases where you had a group of shades, usually on the same wall, that will always be controlled as one group.

The catch with this is that if you assign multiple shades to one shade group, when writing the HomeworksQS program, you will not be able to control these shades individually. Therefore, if you will ever want to control a shade by itself, you should not make it part of a shade group.

Generally, when adding shades to HomeworksQS, you would make each individual shade its own group, unless you have shades that will always move together.