The library

The product library

Everything the firm has ever specified, across every project, ready for the next one.

Watch the video · 1:39Add items from the library

Where Library → Product library

The Product library holds everything the firm has ever specified, across every project, two abreast on a wide screen.

The product library: search, sort, category chips and the products themselves.

Finding a product

• A search by name, maker, type or model code.
• A sort, by Vendor, Type and Model # too.
• The five biggest categories as chips, and the rest in More categories.
• With images / Without images — only the products that have a picture, or only those still missing one.

The search box in the bar, and the picker that adds from the library to a project, find a product by its model code however it is written — CH-2041, ch2041 and CH 2041 are the same code.

List or grid

The two icons beside the sort, List view and Grid view, switch the layout. Grid shows each product as a picture card: its name, maker and model, its color or finish and size when its details give them, how often it has been specified and, for those who see prices, its price. It is two across on a phone and five on a wide screen.

The choice is yours alone, kept on your account, and List until you change it.

Clipped and expiring

• A Clipped chip, with its count, lists products clipped from websites that no item uses yet. They stay out of the main list until one does.
• A Prices expiring pill shows products whose price has expired or expires within 30 days (set Price valid until on the product), and each shows a badge.

The foot of the list says which page you are on of how many and how many products there are (Page 2 of 23 · 1,380 products), with First, Previous, Next and Last. The other long lists — projects, orders, invoices, quotes, meetings, makers, vendors — say the same.

A product's page

A product page shows where it has been specified, its images, its Details, pricing and notes, and lets you add it to a project or edit it.

Details are the lines the firm's old system kept on it, in their order — Color/Finish, Dimensions, Content, Width, Pattern, Repeat and so on. Where the firm keeps makers from its clients, a client doesn't see the lines that name the maker's product.

Beside the maker's name at the top of its Source card (which lists that maker's other products here), a small arrow opens the product's own page on the maker's site in a new tab, when the product has a web link. The link is also under Web page. Where makers are kept from clients, a client sees neither the maker, the model nor the link.

A product's page: where it is specified, its pictures, details, pricing and source.

See also Adding products · Makers, vendors and contacts · product-templates · A 3D model of a product

Adding products

From a web page, a spreadsheet, the web clipper, or by hand.

Watch the video · 1:39Add items from the library

From a web page

The page's own declarations come first and the AI key reads the rest. Without the key only the title, description and picture come across.

A page that needs a login, a link that lands on the site's home page, or a page with nothing about any one product fills nothing and says why. The vendor's own name and blurb never go in as the product's. Use the web clipper while signed in to the vendor's site, or type the details.

When a maker's site blocks reading

Some makers' sites check for automated visitors — a Press & Hold box, an I'm not a robot check, a Just a moment… page — and show the server only the check. Read the page then says so in words (This maker's site checks for automated visitors…), fills nothing, and opens Add screenshots instead.

• Prices follow what you may see: someone who doesn't see costs gets no cost filled, and someone who doesn't see prices, no price.
• With the month's AI actions used up, it says so and keeps the screenshots: they are attached when you save, for you to type the details from.
• On the demo the screenshots are read by pattern from the page's text pasted with them, and spend nothing.
• It is there for whoever adds products or specifications — never for a client or a contractor.

Add screenshots instead: paste, drop or choose screenshots of the product page, then read them.

The page's address is saved with the product as its Web page, editable on the product itself.

New product: paste a product page's address and read it, or type the details.

The web clipper

Clip from a website is a bookmarklet: on any vendor page, one click brings the title, description, picture and address into a new product for you to finish. See Clip from a website.

From a spreadsheet

Import spreadsheet on the library takes a CSV or Excel price list or schedule. Columns are matched by name, you correct the match, and products with the same manufacturer and model are updated rather than duplicated.

Import products brings a CSV or Excel price list or catalog into the library (uploaded, from a Google Sheets or Excel link, or as cells pasted from any spreadsheet): columns are guessed and yours to correct, a title row and a totals line at the foot are passed over, Markup % and Lead time are read, and a second import updates the same products rather than doubling them. The full account is under Importing what you already have.

Clip from a website

Bring a vendor's product page across in one click.

Watch the video · 1:39Add items from the library

Where Library → Clip from a website

Clip from a website: the button to drag to your bookmarks bar.

• Add to a project as a new item — choose the project and area. The item number is offered in the area's habit and checked, so a number the project already uses is asked about: update that item, use the next number, or cancel.
• Update an item — choose the item. Its product's empty details are filled from the page, and where both have a value you choose which to keep, side by side.
• Just the library — the clip waits under Clipped in the Product library, out of the main list, until an item uses it.

Pages that need care

• A vendor site that needs a login: sign in there first, then open the product and clip it — the clipper reads the page in your own browser.
• A sign-in page, or a page about the vendor rather than a product, is said and nothing is filled.
• A price is filled in as your cost only where the page names it a trade or net price; a public or sale price goes under MSRP.
• A picture that does not load is said, and its address kept on the product with Try again. When the maker's site blocked it, crop one from a screenshot instead: Add screenshots instead on the clip page.
• A site that checks for automated visitors (a Press & Hold box) shows its check first. Finish it, wait for the product, then clip; clipped on the check itself, the clip says Finish the site's check (e.g. Press & Hold), then clip again. Where a page still won't come across, Add screenshots instead reads screenshots of it — see When a maker's site blocks reading.
• The bookmark carries the page itself across — its words, its declared details and its pictures, the main one as your browser has it when the site allows — so nothing is fetched from the maker again. A bookmark from before October 2026 can arrive with only the address and title (browsers no longer carry the page with it); the clip page says so. Drag the button from Clip from a website onto the bar in its place.

On a phone

Paste the page's address into Have the product's web page? on New product, or into Web link on a new specification, and press Read the page. The details fill themselves in, and a specification made that way gets the page as its library product, picture and all.

Makers, vendors and contacts

Who you buy from, their people and their history — merged, never deleted.

Where Library → Makers or Vendors and contacts

Makers

Makers lists who you buy from, three abreast on a wide screen, ninety a page with the most-used first and the page count at the foot. Each shows its specification and project counts, and a search narrows the list. Click one for its products.

Merge two spellings… joins two spellings of one maker across the library ("ARTERIORS" into "Arteriors"). The old spelling is kept so later imports read it as the new name.

When the merge leaves the same model in the library twice under one maker (the same model code), it offers Combine N duplicate products. For each code the product most specifications use is kept; the others' specifications move to it (their pictures too if it has none), and the others are set inactive with a note saying where they went.

Makers: most used first, each with its specification and project counts.

Vendors and contacts

Vendors and contacts opens on a Recent row of the contacts touched lately, then manufacturers, reps, suppliers and clients, most specified first, sixty a page with the page count at the foot. Filter by role (a contact can be several) or find one by search.

Each contact shows its main contact's name, position, email, phone, mobile and fax, the projects they were specified on, and its history: every edit with before and after, rep changes called out, comments anyone leaves for the record, and status changes.

Vendors and contacts: recent contacts first, then everyone by role.

Never deleted, only merged or marked

• Contacts are never deleted. Mark out of business or Mark inactive keeps the name on old orders and specifications and shows a badge.
• Merge into… on a card folds a second spelling of the same company into it, with its orders, bills, quotes, products and history; the specifications that named it follow. An email, phone or contact the two cards disagree on is kept in the notes and the history, not lost.
• Adding a card whose name reads like one already there ("Ashgrove Seating Inc" beside "Ashgrove Seating") asks first and offers the existing card. A maker typed on a new product that reads like one in the library offers that spelling.

Look them up

On a contact's page, Look them up searches the web for the company's public details from what the card holds (the company, a name, the domain of their email): website, a published phone, the address, a line on what they make, and their own LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, X and YouTube pages.

• Nothing is written until you check what to keep. A value that would replace something already there starts unchecked.
• Each kept field shows on the card as filled in from the web, with the page it was read from, so nobody mistakes it for a checked fact.
• Money — bank details, terms, prices — is never asked for.
• One AI action per search on PortSpace's AI; none on your own AI key. Some AI accounts can't search the web from here: on a portal whose own key is one of them, the card says so in place of the button.

Shared directory

Beside the list, Shared directory is PortSpace's own list of the trade's manufacturers, fabric houses, lighting companies and workrooms, read-only. Add to our vendors and contacts copies a company in as your own card, yours to edit from then on. The demo does not show it.

Which sources carry which makers

Link a maker to the sources that sell it, so an item shows who to buy from.

A contact card can say which makers a source sells and which sources sell a maker (Sources and Manufacturers in the project-first layout).

Where Library → Vendors and contacts → a card → Makers and vendors

On a card under Vendors and contacts, Makers and vendors (the tabbed layout: Manufacturers and Vendors; the project-first layout: Manufacturers / Sources) lists Makers they sell and Vendors who sell them, each a link to that card.

An item whose maker has sources shows them under its source details (Vendors who sell them), so you can see who to buy from.

Both companies need a card; a card cannot carry itself, and a pair is listed once.

A contact card with the makers it sells and the sources that sell it.

Vendor price lists

A vendor uploads a price list at a link; nothing reaches the library until you accept it.

Where Library → Price lists to review

Asking a vendor for a list

Reviewing what came in

Nothing reaches the library yet. Administrators are alerted, and so is whoever raised the open purchase orders with that vendor, since their prices are the ones about to move.

The list waits under Library → Price lists to review (also on the dashboard) until someone accepts or rejects it. Each upload is one card with:

• an eight-row preview;
• what accepting would add and change — a product listed twice counted once, and any price that cannot be read, such as “$395.00 / LF”, named, not dropped;
• the two decisions beside it, with earlier decisions folded at the foot.

Accepting brings the products in under the vendor's name, matched by manufacturer and model so a new list updates the old one. The vendor's history notes who sent and who accepted it.

Price lists to review: each upload with its preview and what accepting would change.

Templates and resources

What new specifications start from, the details each kind of product records, and the firm's shelf of fonts and standards.

Specification templates

Where Library → Specification templates

Specification templates are the pre-filled text new specifications start from, grouped by category in two columns. Each card is just the name and how many specifications use it; click one to see and edit what it pre-fills. Searching opens the matching template and lights it up so the eye lands on it.

For owners and administrators, a line at the top leads to and from Item templates.

Specification templates, grouped by category, each with how many specifications use it.

Product templates

Product templates — templates and pick lists, under Library → Templates — say, for each kind of product, the details it records, in order, and the lists that make them drop-downs. Some spec systems call it the Template Type. Only those who manage settings see the page (Settings → Specification fields links to it too).

Open one to rename it, say which product types it is suggested for, and edit its fields:

• a label, and the kind (Text, Drop-down, Yes / No, Number);
• the list, one value per line in the order it is offered;
• Allow "Other…", so a value outside the list can be typed;
• a default filled in when a product takes the template;
• whether it was printed on purchase orders or on proposals in the system it came from.

↑ and ↓ reorder, ✕ removes, + Add a field adds; + New template starts one. Removing a template products use archives it: they keep it and their values, and it is no longer offered.

Giving a product a template

A product's values live on the product. Change a list and a value no longer in it stays, marked not in the list; a detail the template has no field for is kept after the template's own. Default (free text) is no template.

The product page and the specification's Details show the lines in the template's order. Every change to a product's details is in its history, label by label.

Fonts and resources

Watch the video · 1:23Fonts and resources

Where Library → Fonts and resources

Fonts and resources holds what the firm uses on every job rather than on one: its fonts, the templates a job starts from, its own marks, and the standards it works to.

Each entry is a link or a file, whichever suits, with a note saying what it is for. A foundry's license rarely allows the font file itself to be handed round, and a template that lives in Dropbox goes stale the moment it is copied.

A font also carries where it is licensed, how many seats in the license's own words, and what to use instead when somebody has not got it. Search finds them by name, by note, by foundry or by substitute, so "which font, and how many seats have we got" is answered from the search box.

Everyone inside the firm may read the shelf; whoever edits specifications keeps it; nobody outside the firm sees it at all.

Fonts and resources: the firm's fonts, templates, marks and standards.

The instruction library

The firm's standard instruction lines, kept in one place and copied onto each new item.

Where Library → Specification templates → Instruction library

The firm keeps its standard instruction lines in one place — the master Instructions, in every style: Library → Specification templates → Instruction library (Spec Instructions on the project-first layout's Main Menu and in its menu). Staff working across the firm read it; those who edit specifications change it.

The instruction library: lines by item type, in order, with the kinds of project they are kept to.

What a line is for

Each line is for every item, an item type (a category, matched in any case) or a product template. It may be kept to one project category — the kind of job (HSP Hospitality, RES Residential…), kept on the same page and chosen per project under Areas and rooms → Project category.

Lines keep their order within their item type (↑ ↓), and can be edited or removed (items that took a line keep their copy).

Importing lines

Import from a CSV reads a file with these headings, adding after what the library has or in its place:

• item_type — ALL or blank for every item;
• order — 01, 02, 02a… as people read them;
• instruction;
• project_category — a code; new ones are made.

On each item

A new item takes the lines for it, in order: every-item lines, then its item type's and its template's; those kept to another kind of project are left out. From then on the lines are the item's own.

Its Instructions card (a block on the project-first form; under Specifications on the tabbed layout's Details tab) lists them numbered:

• Edit instructions changes, adds, moves and removes them.
• Insert standard instructions adds the library's lines it lacks (never a line twice).
• + library beside a line of its own adds it to the library under the item's type.

Copies of items (to an area, to a project, a duplicated project) carry their lines. The spec book prints them, numbered, under the specification, and the list's Instructs column (Columns → Instructions; on by default in the project-first layout) counts them.

Clients and contractors read an item's lines as written; only the firm's people see the library.

Categories

The firm's list of categories, offered on every specification and template.

Where Library → Categories

Library → Categories is the firm's list: what the category picker offers on every specification and template, each with how many specifications, projects and templates use it (a zero is left blank). In the project-first layout they are called Categories.

Categories: each with how many specifications, projects and templates use it.

• Add one.
• Point at a row for Rename and Remove.
• Rename: every specification and template follows, and renaming onto an existing name merges the two.
• Remove one and choose where its specifications go.

A new name typed on a specification joins the list by itself.

Someone kept to listed projects (a Restricted seat) does not see Categories, Specification templates or Price lists to review: they are the firm's housekeeping, not their projects'.

A 3D model of a product

A model made from a product's photo and dimensions, for layouts and presentations.

Watch the video · 1:393D models from your specs

Where the firm has 3D models switched on (PortSpace switches it on per firm), a product with a photo and its dimensions — at least two of width, depth and height — has a 3D model card, on the product and on every specification that uses it (under its 3D tab).

Making one

The AI is given the photos and the dimensions exactly as the specification writes them. A missing one is judged from the photo, and the card says so first.

The model is kept on the product, so every project that uses the product has it without paying again. Make again makes a new one.

Its size against the specification

• Within 5% of every dimension the specification gives, a model is scaled to the exact size (and turned a quarter first if its width and depth came out swapped). The card says so — 30 × 32 × 31 in (spec 30 × 32 × 31) · fitted from 2.8% off.
• Further off, it is kept as it was made, because stretching it would hide a misreading (a seat height taken for the back, say). The card names the dimension: height 12% over the spec — make an alternative.
• A dimension the specification doesn't give is never scaled. The card says depth not in the spec, with the size the model came out at.

Make an alternative (shown on a finished model, at its price — half of Standard to start) has it made afresh, a different take on the same piece. It adds a new version rather than replacing the old.

Versions

Every version is kept for good — a new model never replaces an old one. Under the model, Versions lists every one, newest first and numbered by its tier and the day it was made (Version 2 · Detailed · 27 Sep 2026, Version 3 · Alternative · 27 Sep 2026), each still downloadable years later.

Each has a thumbnail, its size check in a few words, and a Download in your usual format. The product's model is marked Current, and Use this version on any other makes it the product's model. Click a version's thumbnail to show it above.

Looking at it and downloading

Turn it ↻ shows the model itself: drag to turn it, scroll or pinch to zoom.

The Download button offers your usual format first — OBJ with its materials in a zip (Revit, SketchUp through its importer, most programs) until you choose another. Other formats has FBX (Revit, 3ds Max), DAE (SketchUp), GLB (Blender, the web) and USDZ (iPhone and iPad AR). The one you choose becomes your usual.

Some models — the example hotel's among them — keep only their GLB until someone asks for another format. The first download of that format is made there and then: the card says Preparing your OBJ… a few seconds. and the file downloads by itself when it is ready. From then on that format downloads at once, for everyone.

It counts toward the firm's storage. Clients and installers see a product's model only where they would see the product.

Your own 3D model

Bring in a model of a product — the portal's download edited in your own program, or the maker's own file — as a new version, with no AI actions.

A product's 3D model card takes a model of your own as well as making one. Two ways it is used: download the model, change it in your own program and bring it back; or bring in the maker's own file (many makers publish theirs), which is exact where a made model is an approximation. Either way it costs no AI actions.

Bringing one in

An OBJ has no units of its own and programs disagree about which way is up: left to the portal, it takes the units and the up that bring the model closest to the specification's dimensions (with none, the ones that make it furniture-sized), and the card says what it read it in. Choose them yourself when you upload if you know.

Its picture on the card and its view from above for layouts are made a few seconds after it is saved; the other download formats are made the first time someone asks for them, as for any model.

Its versions

• Under Versions an uploaded version reads Uploaded by and the person's name; one an AI made reads its tier and AI-made.
• Use this version makes any version the product's model, uploaded or made.
• Remove takes an uploaded version away, files and all; the one chosen before it becomes the model again. A version an AI made is never removed — every one is kept for good.

Bringing in a model, choosing the current one and removing an uploaded one are for staff who edit the library — wherever the card shows: where the firm has 3D models switched on, or on a product that already has a model. Clients and contractors see the product's model where they would see the product, and never upload.

CAD drawings of a product

Front, side and top elevations of a product's 3D model with its overall dimensions and a title block, as DXF and PDF.

Under a product's 3D model, Drawings makes its CAD drawings: the plan (top view), front and side elevations — the back too if you check Add the back view — in the third-angle layout American drawings use, visible lines solid and hidden lines dashed, the overall width, depth and height dimensioned, and a title block with the product, maker, model number, scale, date and your firm.

Making them

The files

• DXF: the views at full size, in inches, on layers VIEW-FRONT, VIEW-SIDE, VIEW-TOP (VIEW-BACK), HIDDEN (a dashed line type), DIMENSIONS and TITLE. AutoCAD, Revit (Insert → Import CAD), SketchUp Pro, Rhino, Vectorworks and ArchiCAD open it; AutoCAD saves it as DWG.
• PDF: one letter sheet on your letterhead (your logo, typeface and color) at a standard scale it states — 3/4" = 1'-0" for a chair, say.
• SVG and PNG: the same sheet as vector lines and as a picture.

In spec sheets and spec books

Check Elevations (CAD drawing) on the spec book page and each item whose product has drawings gets an Elevations page right after its sheet; each spec sheet made from the same page (the zip of sheets) takes them as its page 2. Off by default; never in a client's book.

Making drawings is for staff who edit specifications; any of the firm's staff can look at and download them. Clients and contractors never see them. Drawings come with 3D models: where those are not switched on, the card says to ask us.