What the file actually holds, why it so often outlives the licence that made it, and the three-step way to turn it into a PDF you can read, check and send on — from any catalogue, with nothing uploaded.
A kitchen designed in 2020 Design leaves behind one file: the .kit. Dealers keep it, designers take copies with them, homeowners are sometimes handed one on a memory stick, and countertop shops receive them by email. The catch is that it opens in exactly one program, and that program is a subscription. This page is about the file itself, and about the viewer we built so the file can be read without it.
Despite the name, a .kit is not a picture of a kitchen. It is a description of one: a list of objects with a position, a rotation and three dimensions each. The walls come first — each with a length, a height, a thickness and the side the room is on. Then the openings: windows with a sill height, doors, pass-throughs. Then every piece that was placed — base, wall and tall cabinets, panels, fillers, appliances, the sink, the hood, the lights, the chairs — each carrying the code of whatever catalogue the designer was working in, plus its width, height and depth as placed, which is not always the catalogue size.
That last point matters. When a designer cuts a filler down to 2½″ or specifies a wall cabinet at 39″ instead of 42″, the file stores the cut size. Anything that reads the file faithfully will show the kitchen as it was drawn, not as the catalogue would have shipped it.
2020 Design is licensed per seat, by subscription, and it is priced for dealerships. So the file outlives the licence in predictable ways:
In every one of these cases the useful thing is not the software. It is a drawing you can read and a list you can count.
Files saved by 2020 Design v9 through v14 (2020 Design Live) have been tested, including the sample kitchens that ship with 2020’s own catalogues. If a file will not open, send it to us through the contact page and we will look at it.
The top view. Walls to scale, numbered in the order 2020 numbers them; every cabinet as a footprint labelled with its code; wall cabinets dashed so they read as overhead; appliances tinted and named — fridge, range, cooktop, dishwasher, sink, hood; windows and doors set into the wall. Wall lengths in inches and in feet-and-inches. An island, or anything else standing away from the walls, is drawn where it stands.
One elevation per wall. Base, wall and tall cabinets at their real height and mounting height, with running dimensions under the base row and above the uppers, the wall length below and the wall height at the side. This is the drawing an installer wants and the one a countertop shop measures from.
The item list. Every code, its description, width × height × depth exactly as stored, grouped with a quantity and the wall it sits on. Decor and lighting are listed separately, and so is the stock that is sold by length — toe kick, countertop, crown and light-rail moulding, finished sides.
Kitchen design software usually needs the catalogue a file was built with, because it draws each cabinet from the catalogue’s model. The viewer does not try to. It draws every piece from the size and position stored in the file and prints the code the file carries, whether that code is B36 from a stock catalogue, DB303424 from a manufacturer’s or something nobody outside one dealership has ever seen. The one exception is appliances: 2020’s own appliance and plumbing catalogues are recognised code by code, and anything else that is described as a fridge, range, hood, dishwasher or sink is named on the drawing, so the plan reads at a glance.
The other side of that coin: the viewer will not tell you whether a cabinet is a good cabinet or what it costs. It shows you what was drawn.
The file is parsed and drawn by code running in your browser. It is not sent to our servers, it is not stored, and we never see it — you can load the page, disconnect from the internet and it still works. If you later choose to open the design in the Flip Kitchen designer, that is a separate, deliberate step, and it asks you to sign in first.
It is a drawing viewer, not a design tool, so a few things are out of scope on purpose: no 3D, no door swings or hardware, no countertop outline (the countertop is listed as stock, not drawn), decor drawn as faint outlines only, and no pricing of any kind. Cut-down pieces are shown at their cut size with no comment on whether the cut was wise. If a file contains records the viewer cannot read, it says so at the top of the page rather than silently leaving them out.
For members, designers and sales staff there is one more button: Open in Flip Kitchen Designer. It hands the same file to the planner. The walls, windows, doors and appliances land exactly where the file put them; the cabinets, which came from another catalogue, are set aside and the planner designs that part again in the Flip Kitchen catalogue — with the sink base sized to the sink, the range and fridge where they were, and a 3D view and a quote at the end. If the file was drawn in the Flip Kitchen catalogue in the first place, every matched cabinet comes across as-is instead.
Yes. Drop the file on flipkitchen.ca/kit and you get the top view, an elevation of every wall and the item list, plus a PDF to download. No licence, no account, no upload.
That is exactly what the viewer produces: one PDF with the top view, one elevation per wall and the item list, drawn from the file itself. It is not a print of 2020's own sheets; it is a fresh drawing of the same data.
Yes, with any catalogue. Pieces are drawn from the size and position stored in the file and labelled with their own code, so the catalogue never has to be present.
No. The .kit file does not carry the dealer's pricing, and the viewer does not add any. What it gives you is the list you can put next to the quote.
Yes. The file never leaves your browser. We do not receive it, store it or see it.
Send it through the contact page. Versions 9 to 14 of 2020 Design are covered today; a file that trips the reader is usually a structure we have not met yet, and we add it.
Thirty seconds from a .kit you could not open to a PDF you can print, check and send.
Open the .kit viewer →