Tinn 0.7.1 is out, and it is the biggest change to Tinn so far. The app has a new layout built around the Spec sheet. The printed document is new from the cover to the last page. Properties now lets you say what a product has to be before you pick one. And product photos mostly look after themselves. Your projects open as they are.
(There is no 0.7.0. That number went to test builds.)
Good to know before you update: projects opened in Tinn 0.7.1 are updated to a new file format. Older versions of Tinn can still open them, but read-only. If you share project files with a colleague, ask them to update too.
The printed spec document
The sheet you hand to a client or a contractor now reads like a proper document.
- A cover with your firm’s logo. Add your firm’s name, logo and standard notes once in Settings > Firm, and every spec document leads with them. A small “Made with Tinn” sits at the foot. You can add a cover photo too: one of the project’s product photos, or an image of your own.
- The project facts on the cover: address, project number, document number, property number, status and number of pages. Anything you leave empty stays off the page.
- A contents page with page numbers. It appears by itself from three rooms up, or you can choose always or never.
- Every room is a numbered chapter and starts on a new page (you can switch that off). The room name runs along the top of each page, and the foot carries the document number, the revision, the status and “Page 3 of 7”.
- Revisions A, B, C. Issue a new revision with one line about what changed. The revision history prints with the document.
- Document statuses: Draft, For comment, For approval, Approved, For ordering.
- Three ready setups. Specification. Client presentation, with large photos and no prices. And the Brief, which prints your goals and requirements before any product is chosen (offered when goals are switched on, see Properties below).
- The right words for your country. Choose Norway, Sweden, Brazil or international per project, and the sheet uses that country’s words for the property number and the tax.
- Smaller things on paper: one photo per product (the main one), “or equivalent” after a product when you tick it, a Colour / finish field on tiles, flooring, furniture, joinery and doors, the line “Images are for illustration” whenever photos print, and a setting to list every option under its product.
- PDFs name themselves: the project, the document, the revision and the date, so the file is easy to find later.
- Fixed: on the client’s copy the unit price now includes your markup, so unit price times quantity matches the line total. Markup itself never prints. The technical line with the file ID no longer prints on the page. Dates, numbers and money, the standard field names and choice words such as “Wall-hung” now print in the project’s language.
Properties: start with what the product has to be
- The product is the need, the options are the candidates. At the top of Properties you say how much you need. Type a total, or choose Measure in rows: length and height, a count, and openings to deduct.
- Goals, only when you want them. Tick Goals and requirements for a project, then Set a goal on any product: a budget goal (for the whole line or per unit, with or without VAT) and requirements marked Must or Preferred, such as a fire class or a wood type. Goals stay off until you switch them on, so a simple project stays simple.
- Every option gets a verdict in words, such as “Meets all” or “Fails a must”, and opens to show why, line by line. Budget goals show in the Budget view, apart from the priced totals.
- Options under the product. A Show options switch on the Spec sheet lists each product’s options right under its row. Click one to open it in Properties.
- Metric or imperial per project, with feet and inches when you type.
- Clearer words throughout: Quantity, Need, Details, Show empty fields.
Product photos
- Tinn decides for itself whether to clean a photo. A product shot gets its background removed; room photos stay as they are, and line drawings are never cleaned. Old room photos that were cleaned automatically go back to the original.
- Choose the main photo from the button in the corner of the picture (Choose image…). When a product arrives with several photos, Tinn picks the one that shows the product on its own. For products you already have, it suggests swaps you can accept or skip.
- Click a photo to see it full window.
- Keep up to 12 photos per option, scaled down to a sensible size so your files stay light.
- A calmer Cards view: the strip of thumbnails under each card is hidden. Switch on Photo strip in the header to bring it back.
The new layout: the Spec sheet and its tools
- One app, a core and its tools. The Spec sheet is the core. Board, Plans, Permits, Tasks, Schedule and Versions sit in a column on the left, one click away. They carry a Beta label while they mature, and each one has a short feedback box: tell me what is missing.
- New to Tinn? You start with the Spec sheet and switch on more tools in Settings > Tools. Already using Tinn? You keep every tool you had, now marked Beta.
- Hide a tool in one project. Right-click it in the left column and choose Hide in this project. The choice travels with the file, and nothing is deleted. Switching a tool off in Settings only hides it too.
- Your own order. Drag the tools into the order you like within their group.
- A title bar with menus and search, and one panel on the right for Properties, the Desk and Learn.
- Five views of one sheet: List, Cards, Matrix, Budget and Presentation. Budget is a view of the Spec sheet now, not a separate place. Presentation shows your products as photo cards for a client, with prices hidden until you switch them on.
- Filter by status: Draft, In review, Approved, On hold. The print always shows the whole sheet.
- Project fonts. Give a project a heading font and a text font, or pick one of four ready pairs. They are used on the print and for new text on the Board. The big font window is now called the Font library.
- Properties in printed order, and moving a product to another room really moves it.
Start screen and project Home
- A simpler start screen with short project cards, search as a plain field, and a thin bar on each card that shows the money against the project’s budget.
- Coming up: tasks and permit deadlines due in the next two weeks, across your projects, above the recent list.
- Home in every project, with three charts: the budget, the mix of statuses, and money by room. Click a status to open the Spec sheet filtered to it.
A calmer first start
- A three-page welcome for new users: choose a language, decide on usage data, then open the example or start your own project. The usage-data question now says plainly what is sent and what never is, and both answers weigh the same.
- Villa Solberg, an example project on the start screen, marked Example. Three rooms and twelve real Norwegian products with 40 options, links to the makers’ pages, facts and photos, VAT, markup, a budget, an approved total and a set of picture versions. Change anything, it is yours.
- Small tips the first time. Three short tips when you first open a project, and one quiet tip the first time you visit each tool. Switch them off, or show them all again, in Settings > Help and learning.
- Learn opens in the right panel, and F1 opens it from anywhere.
Versions (Beta)
- A round of versions now belongs to the whole set, with one price for the round, and each person you pay shows once under Still to pay.
- Check these versions. When Tinn updates an older project and finds two rounds that may be the same, or prices that disagree, it lists them at the top of Versions. You decide whether to join them or keep them apart. Nothing is joined without you.
- Money is edited in Properties only, and one button marks every picture in a round as Sent. One click selects a picture, a double click opens it.
Smaller things
- No Save button, and now it says so. Tinn saves every change as you work. The dot in the title bar tells you, and Ctrl+S tells you it is already saved.
- Close a project with the x beside its name in the left column, or with Ctrl+W.
- Properties and the Desk share one width, and they open beside your work without pushing the bars above it.
- A new logo and wordmark.
- Your own colour. Pick an accent colour in Settings > Color and look. Printed sheets keep their colours.
- The window fits the screen. If Tinn last closed partly off the screen, it comes back fully on it. The start screen opens with no side panel.
- Windows behaves like Windows. Tinn remembers its size and place, Alt and F10 open the menus, a double click on the title bar maximises, and typing in progress is saved when you close with Alt+F4 or Ctrl+W.
- Keyboard shortcut labels are hidden to keep the screen quiet. Turn them on, and see the full list, in Settings > Help and learning.
- Drop a .tinn file onto the window to open it.
- Many fixes, among them: a product name that disappeared in the List view, the Copy and delete buttons sitting above the row line, Versions columns drifting away from their headers, rooms emptied by a filter now leave the view, new projects take the app’s language, the Board’s spec panel shows the product’s own photo, and the quantity on a row now matches the need you set in Properties.
How to update
If Tinn is already installed, the updater offers 0.7.1 the next time you start it and installs it over your current version. New here? Download from the Download page.
Simon