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July 2024 #16300 Page #10
Wall Panel Technology, Part IV: Software Evolution
T
he creation of wall panel software is like the creation of all software – experienced insiders do it best. That was true with Gang-Nail’s AutoPan in the 1970s, which Joe Cotton developed while building wall panels for his homebuilding business. It was also the case with Ted Dasher’s “The Plan” in the 1980s, which he conceived while prefabbing panels on jobsites. (For more on those stories, see Wall Panel Technology, Part III: A Dash of Software.) Unfortunately, both programs languished at a time when there was little incentive to update or replace them, even from the large suppliers. However, a few individual entrepreneurs kept the fire burning.
By Joe Kannapell
The Early Impetus – Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, more than a thousand component plants started up, but not many of them championed wall panels. Even if they built panels, they were still known as truss fabricators, and later, as truss manufacturers. Their industry association, the Truss Plate Institute (TPI), was obviously not focused on promoting panelization. But that was destined to change beginning in 1979, when the consummate industry insider, Lenny Sylk, broadened the mission of his company, Material Fabrication, Inc., to provide the entire structural frame, of which panels were a key element. Sylk renamed his company Shelter Systems, Inc., and, in 1983, helped found a new association, the Wood Truss Council of America (WTCA), dedicated to promoting all structural components. In 1985, he validated the labor savings of panelization by erecting a componentized house next to a stickframed house. This convincing demonstration was later replicated at the National Homebuilders Show (now IBS), energizing the push for panels. And as was the case with trusses, all that was needed was strong advocates with serviceable panel programs. Wall Builder and Plant-Net – In 1990, a wall panel champion named Lowell Thomas Wood, known to most as Tommy, broke away from Ted Dasher and began his own business. Tommy had learned the basics of software and much more from Dasher, a brilliant engineer, but he learned even more traveling the country installing and training CMs on Dasher’s panel program. His unkempt appearance and rural Mississippi mannerisms endeared
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