Pick the right operator. Lay out the pads and conduit. Drop the photo eyes. Mark fire-department access. All from the gate you've already drawn — in minutes, not hours.
A new section of Ornamental Designer Pro that turns your gate elevation into a fully-specced automation install plan.
The gate is the easy part. Picking the right operator, sizing the pad, running enough conduit, locating the photo eyes, planning fire-department access — that's the hard part. Get it wrong and you're tearing out concrete on the install.
Manufacturer charts buried in PDFs. Duty cycle, gate weight, leaf length, voltage, UL listing — five variables to cross-reference before you can quote with confidence.
The crew shows up to find the pad an inch too short or the conduit run six inches off the gate post. The customer notices.
UL 325 says they go where they actually catch a person. Most layouts forget about the open-gate position entirely.
Knox boxes, sirens, strobes, manual release — the AHJ wants to see them on the plan before they'll sign off. Not after the install.
The Adviser reads the gate you already drew, recommends the operator and accessories that fit, and lays out the install on a real plan view you can hand to a crew or an AHJ.
Estimates gate weight from your design, then ranks operators that support it — by manufacturer, duty cycle, voltage, and budget tier. Filter Liftmaster vs FAAC vs DKS vs BFT vs whatever you stock.
Concrete pads, conduit runs, photo-eye positions, keypads, exit loops, and fire-department access — auto-placed based on the operator you pick and the gate's geometry. Drag anything that needs adjusting.
The operator brackets show up on your existing gate elevation drawing at the right height. The fabricator and the installer are looking at the same picture.
Download a layered DXF for CAD or a clean PDF for the crew, the customer, the AHJ, or the permit office — same plan, every audience.
Operators, photo eyes, controllers, loop detectors, keypads, exit loops, surge protectors, battery backups — every component has its real specs, restrictions, and compatibility rules. New manufacturers and models get added on a regular schedule.
Recommendations aren't a guess. They're a filter against manufacturer-published limits.
The Gate Automation Adviser is in active development. In the meantime, get started on the gate side — every design you draw today flows straight into the Adviser when it ships.
Watch the complete 7:48 walkthrough — from logging in to exporting a fabrication-ready drawing with a full material list. Gates, fences, handrails, annotations, and AI generation, all covered.