I read your article featuring Ripples chief executive Roger Kyme, with great interest [read it here]. You couldn't expect us, and undoubtedly other design software providers, not to respond to the rather controversial headline 'CAD destroys personality and flair in design'.

Obviously, this is Mr Kyme's personal viewpoint, to which he is fully entitled. Hand-drawn design visualisations clearly suit his business model very well - or Ripples wouldn't have been able to achieve such considerable success. However, who can predict if that same success wouldn't have been equalled or even surpassed, had the company employed CAD?

There is no reason why a quality CAD solution shouldn't enhance personality and flair in design! The software solution only exists to enable the designer to bring his design concepts to life, not dictate or restrict the creative design process in any way. ArtiCAD's solutions, ArtiCAD-Pro and BathCAD, are designed to help our users to sell to their customers and deliberately avoid restricting the creative design process - so Mr Kyme should not tar all design solutions with the same brush.

The benefits of CAD against hand-drawing are well documented. Speed of design generation is a key factor for many organisations as is the capacity to amend and re-draw a design, alter the colours, furniture styles and materials used at the press of a button (far from the case when hand drawing).

As a sales tool, CAD allows the designer to engage his client in the sales process, discuss and implement design alterations that can be viewed immediately on-screen, which in most cases reduces the length of the sales cycle. We have published numerous case studies where our users' customers have confirmed they placed their bathroom or kitchen order expressly because the CAD drawings inspired their confidence and because, together with the designer, they could influence minor changes that were implemented immediately on screen.

This experience applies to bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens or studies from the very highest end of the price spectrum to the lowest. When you factor in the additional benefits of being able to accurately present designs to installers, list all of the components included in the design and automatically generate a quotation for customers and orders for suppliers - you can see why so many organisations have left the drawing board behind years ago, without regret.

We're finding that designers are increasingly and successfully engaging with their customers via the Internet too as more homeowners become very comfortable with these technologies. Design presentations and design amendments are frequently emailed to busy homeowners to consider at home or in their place of work, or posted to a secure website address for viewing. In some cases, we're aware of the bulk of the sales engagement being undertaken via the Internet, and I'd encourage kbb businesses to consider how to address the potential for using the Internet as part of their sales process.

That said, although Internet-based engagements with prospective customers can be on a one-to-one basis, many designers are loathe to 'share' their designs outside of a face-to-face engagement and I can appreciate this perspective too. It boils down to what suits the individual business, the designers within that business and whether using the Internet in your sales process would appeal to your typical customers and help you to secure more sales, more quickly.

That said, for some organisations that operate at the highest end of the market, stunning hand-drawn presentations are used to set their business apart from their competition and are an important part of a sales process that works for their particular business (as in the case of Roger Kyme). Even some of these organisations also employ CAD in the business so that the designer can transfer the hand-drawn design into CAD in order to achieve all of the other benefits.

This requires an easy, fast and flexible CAD solution - we concede that some software products are simply too complex and take too long to make this feasible. If full colour photo-realistic images don't suit a business, there are stunning black and white or sketch options available from several CAD providers (ourselves included) that allow for superb 'hand-drawn' effects and more. I've seen some superb presentations where CAD is used to generate 3D perspective line drawings that are then hand coloured. This delivers the hand-drawn effect brilliantly while retaining all the benefits of using CAD.

To avoid restricting the creative process, solutions need to allow huge flexibility but in some cases, this flexibility also needs to have the potential to be tempered by what the designer can in fact supply and install, depending upon the needs of the particular business. Most of ArtiCAD's 5,000+ UK users prefer an unrestricted system that allows such flexibility, including the capacity to create their own texture finishes and apply these to any surface in the design. However, some business models require a customised ArtiCAD solution that deliberately restricts the furniture options, for example, as this can prevent the designers from introducing elements into a design that the organisation can't ultimately install. Such organisations aren't necessarily destroying the personality and flair of the designs that their employees create but preventing often costly mistakes.

So, the market is full of different types of businesses and we produce software that makes it easier for those businesses to sell, backed up by services that help to keep them selling. I'm convinced that we could help Mr Kyme improve his business yet further - but it doesn't look as though we'll get the chance on his watch!

If Mr Kyme wants to 'have a pop' at CAD, why doesn't he slam those systems that allow people with no design experience, knowledge or qualifications (normally the homeowner) to 'create designs' on line or CAD solutions that have an 'auto-design' feature. These are the systems that place no value on design - the very process that should be at the heart of the value proposition for most businesses selling kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms or studies.