28.05.2024

Prodim Proliner: Mobile Digital Measuring Device for Stone Masonry Businesses

Building design

Stone masons spend their days measuring and cutting their material. The challenge, however, is to work as precisely as possible while remaining efficient. A digital measuring device like the Prodim Proliner, which is specifically designed for the natural stone industry, helps strike that balance.

Prodim is an international company with offices in the U.S. and the Netherlands. It specializes in improving business processes and offering comprehensive solutions for stonemasons. With the Prodim Proliner, the company demonstrates how this works: This mobile digital measuring device—a cross between a tracker and a coordinate measuring machine—operates with precision. Its measurements serve as CAD drawings for production, quality control, and design. They can be applied across various industries and deliver optimal results for natural stone businesses, for example. In addition, the company offers three new digital template packages that further streamline work in the natural stone industry.

The Proliner is the most reliable, efficient, accurate, and flexible digital measurement solution for the natural stone industry. Stonemasons can quickly and easily take, view, and adjust their measurements on-site. The measurements can even be exported as ready-to-use production files for CNC machines. In addition, Prodim offers practical accessories such as apps and the Prodim Factory software to help natural stone producers streamline their daily business processes, from administration to digitization. With just one platform, it is possible to connect the worksite, the office, and production.

Thanks to its customized software solutions and outstanding digital template packages for stonemasonry businesses and fabricators, Prodim is among the leading experts in comprehensive digital measurement solutions. The company offers customized solutions for every industry. These include not only the Prodim Proliner measuring device with its accompanying app and software but also Prodim desktop software for digitizing production processes, as well as specialized tools such as the Prodim Plotter and the ProCutter.

Prodim Proliner: Customized Solutions for Natural Stone Businesses

Proliner technology has been successful since its inception and has become widely adopted throughout the industry. With over 20 years of experience, Prodim offers digital templating tools and software solutions to help businesses grow. The Prodim Proliner measuring device allows for quick and precise measurements to be taken on-site or in the factory. Physical templates are no longer necessary, as the application-based stone industry software simplifies digital templating. This can be integrated directly into business processes, enabling flexibility and precision.

The portable digital measuring device uses patented technology. Using a wire and a flexible measuring head, users mark key points, which the device then converts directly into a digital CAD file in DXF format. Straight and curved shapes, as well as highly complex ones, can thus be measured accurately from any position. The meter-long cable, equipped with a metal measuring pin, helps mark relevant points. The Prodim Proliner is the fastest and most accurate durable template solution on the market. It delivers reliable results and rapid data transfer via a digital app and Stone-CT software.

It also includes additional features for reviewing, editing, and finalizing measurements on-site. These include, for example, the immediate tangential generation of smooth lines for rapid CNC machining. In addition, stonemasons can add cutouts, production profiles, and materials from a library, place cutting lines, and add machining notes. It is also possible to export drawings and reports for the customer and for production.

Edit and Export On-Site Measurements

Three new packages will make work in the natural stone industry even easier in the future:

Prodim’s Stone Templator package is designed for kitchen countertops and backsplashes. Stonemasons can take digital measurements on-site and edit the digital files in the office or at the factory. The digital measurements are ready in no time and are converted into a digital template that can be refined on the Prodim Proliner or on a PC using Prodim’s Factory software.
With the Stone Interior package, Prodim offers a solution for the digital design of kitchens, bathrooms, and swimming pools. It is used to create digital CNC files on-site and then edit them in the office or at the factory. The package is particularly well-suited for complex digital measurements.
The Stone Interior Advanced package is designed for the digital surveying and processing of challenging projects such as staircases and 3D objects. With this Prodim Proliner package, users can model on multiple levels, resolve overlaps, and thus eliminate all uncertainties even before installation. Both 2D and 3D measurements, as well as multi-level measurements, are possible. And in combination with the Factory Fabricator, stonemasons can customize and nest their designs using digital natural stone labs from their own library to create the most beautiful veining and bookmatch projects.

The Most Beautiful Vein and Bookmatch Projects

Stone Templator Package

Stone Interior Package

Stone Interior Advanced Package

Stone masonry businesses face challenges such as expensive materials and a shortage of skilled workers. This makes the automation and digitization of processes all the more important, as it saves a great deal of effort and enables precise results with high productivity. Solutions like the Prodim Proliner boost efficiency by eliminating manual measurement processes. At the same time, they produce precise results that can then be implemented by qualified staff. Thanks to this automation, it’s possible to handle more orders without hiring additional staff.

For demanding tasks such as the production of custom kitchen countertops and other products for the construction industry—as well as for the memorial sector—automated solutions help reduce the error rate. Thanks to the precise measurements provided by the Prodim Proliner, natural stone companies can improve product quality while flexibly responding to customer requests.

This agility, made possible by modern surveying software for natural stone, boosts the competitiveness of natural stone businesses. After all, only companies that can respond to demand and meet individual customer requests can successfully adapt to the market and win over their clientele.

Whether for kitchens, bathrooms, stairs, or swimming pools, Prodim’s Proliner offers user-friendliness and the best results for natural and ceramic stone projects. For more information, visit: https://www.prodim-systems.de/prodim/

Increased Competitiveness for Natural Stone Businesses

09.12.2024

Event

REM – a film by Tomas Koolhaas

Building design

The director Tomas Koolhaas has made a documentary film about his father, the prominent architect and Pritzker Prize winner Rem Koolhaas. REM focuses on architecture as a space for human experience and takes the perspective of both the architects and the people who live and work in the buildings. The director doesn’t leave out critical themes either when he […]

The director also addresses critical issues when he focuses on his father’s willingness to work for authoritarian regimes such as China or Qatar. With his film project, Tomas Koolhaas is pursuing the goal of creating a new form of architectural communication: Instead of viewing architecture as a lifeless object with rigid images from the outside, the audience should “gain a rare insight into the reality of the hidden inner life of buildings.”

The film screenings will be held in conjunction with a panel discussion with the director Tomas Koolhaas, which will be led by Christoph Grafe in Cologne, Hans-Dieter Nägelke in Berlin and Andres Lepik in Munich.

The German premiere of the documentary film “REM” is organized by the UAA Ungers Archive for Architectural Science in cooperation with the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig, the Kino Gesellschaft Köln, the Architekturmuseum der Technischen Universität Berlin and the Architekturmuseum der TU München.

July 19, 2018, 19.00
Ernst von Siemens Auditorium
Pinakothek of Modern Art

Admission free
Registration at: foerderverein@architekturmuseum.de

04.11.2024

On the death of Karl Ganser

Building design

Karl Ganser saved Zeche Zollverein Essen from demolition. (Photo: Jonas Tebbe via Unsplash)

Karl Ganser passed away on April 21, 2022. As Director of IBA Emscher Park, he was responsible for the largest structural program in Germany.

Karl Ganser passed away on April 21, 2022. As Director of the IBA Emscher Park, he was responsible for the largest structural program in Germany from 1989 to 1999. An obituary.

Karl Ganser died on April 21, 2022 at the age of 84 in Nattenhausen, where he spent his retirement in his grandfather’s old village smithy in his home town of Breitenthal. Karl Ganser is considered one of the most important geographers and urban planners in Germany. He has received numerous honors and awards for his work, such as the “National Prize for Integrated Urban Development and Building Culture” from the Federal Ministry of Transport and the Bavarian Nature Conservation Prize. He was committed to issues of urban development and monument protection as well as nature conservation and environmental protection.

He became well known as managing director of the IBA Emscher Park. From 1989 until his retirement in 1999, Karl Ganser was responsible for the largest structural program in Germany. The Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, the Nordsternpark in Gelsenkirchen and the Zollverein in Essen were created under his leadership. He campaigned for the preservation of architectural witnesses to the industrial age in the Ruhr region. He saved buildings such as the gasometer in Oberhausen and the steelworks in Duisburg-Meiderich from demolition. Today, they are crowd-pullers in the region.

The fact that the steel and coal region developed into a knowledge and creative location is ultimately also thanks to Karl Ganser’s imagination and over 100 projects. He drove his ideas forward with great commitment and inspired other people. “He drilled the thickest boards, but with charm,” is how Roland Günther, art historian and biographer of Karl Ganser, describes him. “He was perhaps the most ingenious guy, who always found a way through unbelievable bureaucracies, through a constant ‘can’t, can’t, can’t’, to make it work after all. He made the impossible possible,” says Roland Günther. For this commitment, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia named him the “Architect of the New Ruhr Area”.

Karl Ganser’s career began with a degree in chemistry, biology and geography at the Technical University of Munich. His dissertation from 1964 dealt with the socio-geographical organization of the city of Munich according to election results. After completing his doctorate at the Institute of Geography, Karl Ganser became project manager in the urban development department of the City of Munich. Among other things, he was involved in the planning of the Olympic Games.

In 1970 he habilitated and in 1971 took over the management of the Institute for Regional Studies in Bonn (now part of the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning). He held this position until 1980. Ganser then moved to the Ministry for Regional and Urban Development in North Rhine-Westphalia, where he headed the urban planning department under the leadership of Christoph Zöpel. The 1987 IBA in Berlin prompted Ganser to propose an IBA in the Ruhr region as a structural program to the ministry. From 1989 to 1999, he was the managing director of the IBA Emscher Park. Karl Ganser retired in 1999. During this time, he continued to work as a publicist, expert and mediator.

The film “Geheimnis Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord” by Marika Liebsch tells the story of the Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park. You can find the film here.