A 2020 Design alternative for small kitchen contractors

2020 Design is now Design Flex

Cyncly, the company behind 2020, sells 2020 Design Live today as Design Flex: the same software with cloud connections added.^[1] It is built for kitchen and bath designers, retailers, manufacturers and remodelers,^[1] and its strength is the catalogs: authorized dealers design with manufacturer cabinets such as Fabuwood, KraftMaid and Wellborn, plus appliances, hardware and surfaces.^[1] It renders photorealistic pictures and 360° panoramas.^[1]

It is desktop software for 64-bit Windows 10 or 11; the design work happens in the local program.^[3] There is a 14-day free trial.^[1]

What Design Flex costs

Cyncly's Design Flex pricing page, read November 8, 2026.^[2] PlaceAnew: Scanning, floor plans, 3D, editing, the kitchen designer with prices and exports are free.

Plan	What it adds	Price
Design Flex Foundation	The desktop software with generic catalogs, no manufacturer catalogs	US$1,895 a year; US$2,195 with a Success Plan
Design Flex	Manufacturer catalogs, design and quoting workflows, closets	US$2,495 a year; US$2,995 with a Success Plan
PlaceAnew	Scan, plan, 3D, kitchen designer with prices, shop drawings, exports	Free

For a dealer selling cabinets every week, that is the cost of doing business. For a contractor who does a handful of kitchens a year between other jobs, it is a lot of software for a small part of the work.

What a small kitchen contractor actually needs

Five jobs, in this order: measure the kitchen, lay out cabinets in sizes you can buy, put a price on it, show the client, and hand the shop what it needs to build. Here is how each tool covers them.

Design Flex facts from cyncly.com and magicplan's help center, read November 8, 2026.^{[3][4][5][1][2][3][1][3]} PlaceAnew facts from its features page.

Job	Design Flex	PlaceAnew
Measure the kitchen	You define the walls in the software. LiDAR scanning is on Cyncly's roadmap, "coming soon". Today a scan comes in from magicplan, which needs a paid magicplan Report or PRO plan.	One LiDAR walk with an iPhone or iPad Pro draws the kitchen: walls, doors, windows, appliances.
Lay out cabinets	Manufacturer catalogs for authorized dealers; generic catalogs on Foundation	Stock US widths on the scanned walls, fillers where a run meets a wall, a corner cabinet that fits each corner
Price it	Item lists and pricing reports; Cyncly says quoting improvements are coming	Prices for the kitchen you designed, in the Cost tab
Show the client	Photorealistic renderings and 360° panoramas	The new kitchen in 3D on the real walls, on the phone in your hand, at the first visit
Hand it to the shop	Item lists by manufacturer for ordering; cut lists are listed for the closet module, not for kitchens, on the pages we read	Shop drawings: the plan, an elevation of every wall, a sheet for each cabinet, the cut list and the hardware
Runs on	A Windows 10 or 11 PC	iPhone Pro or iPad Pro

The measuring is where a small contractor loses the day

Cyncly says it plainly: for designers who measure by hand, scanning could remove one of the most time-consuming steps at the start of a project.^[4] One cabinetry firm's field measure of a rowhouse kitchen takes 90 minutes to two hours.^[6] Then the sketch is drawn again in the design software.

PlaceAnew starts there. The scan is the measurement, and the kitchen designer opens on it. In a 2026 peer-reviewed study, an app built on the same Apple RoomPlan technology found every room of a house and came within about 5% of a laser scanner's total floor area.^[7] In our own office, every wall we could compare came within 2.5 inches of a hand-measured plan, the longest, 17' 2", a third of an inch long.^[8]

When to keep Design Flex

• You are an authorized cabinet dealer and order from KraftMaid, Wellborn or another manufacturer's catalog. Design Flex prices and lists those exact products; PlaceAnew does not.
• You sell from a showroom and the photorealistic rendering closes the sale.
• Your team already works in 2020 files and shares projects in Cyncly's cloud.

Even then, the measuring step is yours to shorten: scan the kitchen with PlaceAnew, take each wall, window and door off the plan with the Measure tool, and define the walls in Design Flex from those numbers.

When PlaceAnew is enough

• You build with stock cabinets from a supplier or a home center, in US sizes.
• A local cabinetmaker builds your boxes. The shop drawings give them the plan, every wall's elevation, a sheet per cabinet, the cut list and the hardware. See PlaceAnew for cabinet makers.
• You sell at the kitchen table. Scan, design on the real walls, show the price, all at the first visit. See PlaceAnew for kitchen and bath remodelers.
• You also need the rest of the house. The same scan gives the floor plan of every room, the 3D model and a DXF for CAD.

Questions contractors ask

Is 2020 Design still sold?

As Design Flex. Cyncly calls it the next evolution of 2020 Design Live, built on the same software.^[1]

Does Design Flex scan rooms?

Not yet on its own: Cyncly lists LiDAR scanning as coming soon.^[4] Today you can bring in a magicplan scan, with a magicplan Report or PRO plan.^[5]

Does Design Flex run on a Mac or iPad?

Cyncly lists 64-bit Windows 11 and Windows 10.^[3] PlaceAnew runs on iPhone 12 Pro or a newer Pro model, or an iPad Pro from 2020 or later.

Can PlaceAnew order from manufacturer catalogs?

No. It designs in stock US cabinet sizes and prices the design; ordering a specific brand's catalog is what dealer software like Design Flex is for.

What does PlaceAnew cost?

Scanning, floor plans, 3D, editing, the kitchen designer with prices and exports are free. The optional PlaceAnew Pro ($19.99 a month or $199.99 a year) only adds more AI plan fixes and AI kitchen pictures, which are still in testing. Files shared from a free account carry a small "Made with PlaceAnew" line.

Measure and design the next kitchen on site

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