Cabinet Design program for Sketchup
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I have developed a Cabinet Design program for Sketchup which may be of interest to this forum. You can watch a preview of the software at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=763bsw5Y0Gk - your comments would be appreciated.
Paul
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WOW!!! Excellent WORK!! Is this only dynamic components or there is some ruby scripting? I have been trying to make something like this but seems to complicated. And there was no good way to export the data for cutting and reporting. What about banding and grain direction - this models are more toward American's way of working - in Europe is a little bit different.
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It's all done with Dynamic Components... the only exception being the export. It does support both Grain Direction and banding.
Some of the other features include control over insets and offsets, joinery (butt vs dado), frameless vs faceframe, Applied Ends, some control over carcass construction, and metric and imperial measure.
Can you give some examples of how European methods differ from American?
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I worked in a cabinet shop here in America for 3 years.... and I have to say they are moving toward European methods and measurements.
nice work... where do we get it?
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Here, we are working with melamine faced boards - mainly 18 mm thick, for backs - HDF 3 or 4 mm, no face frames at all. Backs are usually with grooves or just overlay. European style hinges, ball bearing slides, roller runners or drawer systems from Hettich, Grass or Blum. Doors - simple melamine, MDF soft-forming or post-forming, aluminum frames or glass. Bottom cabinets are on an adjustable legs with kicks 80-100mm. Joinery - Minifix, dowels or Euro screws.
Scroll this pages - sorry, it is in Russian, but there are good pictures. -
And here it is in Google-Pidgin (for some reason, the characters appear in a very weird colour hard to see)
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I have taken a look at the information you sent on Euro construction. Other than the thickness of your materials, It looks very similar to the way that I build my cabinets. The software does allow you to control the thickness and type of materials used. You can use a solid planted back or use a thin back that is inset into grooved cabinet walls. The toekicks that are shown can be detached so that you can use adjustable legs (which is what I do). I only use the toekick box for display purposes... the software allows you to suppress the export to the cutlist program. All in all, I didn't see anything that the program couldn't accomodate.
As for where you can get it. I still haven't released it... it is getting close... but work keeps getting in the way... lol. What I am looking for right now, is for confirmation of what I've done, items that need to be fixed or missing elements that need to be added. I'm not sure of the best way of handling that and am open to suggestions.
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I see You export a data to CutListPlus. How do You handle the non English characters in the names? Where do You put the banding info and is there a way to swap length and width to determine the grain direction - in CutListPlus grain is always with the length. Here is my dynamic basic panel that holds and calculates all the data that I need - I decided not to bother with dynamic components as a cabinets, but to use this panel as the building block for all my furniture, make a normal components for the all basic models and resize them with FredoStretch. The main problems is the data report. Sorry, all the labels are in Bulgarian, but You can look at the formulas and get the idea.
Panel.skp -
I store the grain as the X,Y,Z attribute with each individual component (IE. Deck. Right End, Left End, Back...). My export script then determines how to specify the length/width to Cutlistplus so that the grain is always the Length.
Banding info is held for each of the sides (top,bottom,left,right) of each component and is stored as primary/secondary banding. Cutlist Plus then interprets it according it's values as to what has been defined as primary/secondary banding.
I'm not sure what you mean by the non-english characters - I pass the info in a CSV file with the first row containing the headers.
I downloaded your panel.skp but the contents didn't have a component, only individual faces. could you check - maybe I did something wrong?
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Don't open it directly - import it as a component. Can You export the labels as a header data - http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=29835&start=30.
I'm using just a plain text to adjust the banding for export to CutList, but use materials to paint on the edges and to calculate the real length of the banding - as CutList works only with straight edges. And I can change the texture of this material to match the real band - we sometimes use a different color for the edges. For grain direction I use a switch that just swaps length and width in the Options Window, but doesn't change actual sizes - it is just for exporting to CutList. I have a field for oversize the panel - again,this doesn't change the real sizes, just in the Options Window. This is needed when this panel is non-rectangular and to be cut to final shape. -
Thanks dedmin, I was able to import your panel.
After reviewing the link you provided, I believe I understand the issue of non-english characters now. The only report that I have done to this point is the csv export to Cutlist - and the headers are hard-coded to match what cutlist plus is expecting. The issue becomes important when the report is intended for you to view - you want the headers to be the external names (labels) that have meaning to you and not the internal (english) names that the program code uses. I haven't attempted this yet, but if I can get the label value out of the dictionary, I should be able to generate the proper headers. Thank you for highlighting this! It's a very important interface issue.
Panel.skp:
I let cutlist plus manipulate my cut sizes. If I want an oversize piece (typically it would be for scribing), I use the secondary banding indicator. In cutlist, I associate a negative value to this banding with the result being that the panel is cut oversized on the sides(s) that I want. I don't currently store banding material names within the components. I typically only have one project on the go at any one time, so I rely on my external notes to know what material to use. I don't track banding length requirements nor costs as it is fairly insignificant in my operations. Is this different for you?
I notice that you keep the joinery method (biscuit, dowel, screws...) rather than the joint (butt, dado). as well as the count of items needed for the panel. I need to address parts inventory before I release the software. I was initially thinking of only slides, hinges, and handles/pulls, but will re-think how far I should go.
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My goal is to do as much in SketchUP as I can. Often I work together with the customer - we change colors, handles, legs, materials and etc. I need to code all the valuable information inside a dynamic components. Say for a handle - drilling distance, material, price. For a leg - variable height - from 80-100mm, material, price. This way I have all the info needed for building the project, for answering customer's questions and for calculating the final price. Everything is changing fast from project to project and I can change this data on the fly why building the project. My intend is to export all this data by similar components - say the panels share the same labels in the Component's options and I can export this as a sheet "panels" in OpenOffice CALC where the labels are the headers for the table and use Sum to get all the data. Then for the legs, handles and etc. And this makes sense - for order list and etc. You hardly order all the stuff to the same supplier. This way there is no central database to carry on - everything is with the components, easy to see and change - simple and flexible. For the joinery - we have jigs and a system for drilling and we need only to now what kind of joinery is needed and to calculate price and quantity - again, easy to change on the fly.
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@krisidious said:
I worked in a cabinet shop here in America for 3 years.... and I have to say they are moving toward European methods and measurements.
That's good to hear, Kris.... hopefully we'll all be working off the same units....
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@unknownuser said:
I have developed a Cabinet Design program for Sketchup which may be of interest to this forum. You can watch a preview of the software at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=763bsw5Y0Gk - your comments would be appreciated.
Paul
Hi Paul, so do you expect to release this plugin?
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Hi Andrew,
I do plan to release the plugin but have no fixed date as to when that will be. A lot depends on how much time I can take away from cabinet building, but my goal is to have it ready within the next few months.
I have been using the software in my business for the past year and am satisfied with the stability of it. It does what I need, but question whether it can handle the requirements of others. One of the purposes of this thread is to gather any reactions that could improve the product before release.
My next step is to start producing a series of product how-to videos that I hope will generate further discussion and awareness.
Your comments are always welcome. Please keep checking back for further discussions and video announcements.
Paul
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Hi Bob, I did take a look at the tomatoes plugin last year and took another look this morning to see if the concept was still the same - which it appears to be. It lets you easily create cabinets, but lacks the ability to modify the dimensions or contents afterwards - that's a task that you do on your own or through another tool like FredoScale. I think that on smaller projects, tomatoes could be a good tool to use. I'm not sure how effective it would be on a large scale project where changeseems to be the one constant.
With my components, you can alter all parameters after the fact - add a drawer; change doors/drawer fronts, counts, and reveals; if you change the type of drawer slide used, the drawer box size will recalculate automatically; change material thickness and all affected components are adjusted for you... You can create a model cabinet based on how you build and then store that in your components list. Once it is in that list, you can use it over and over again without having to do any work other than specifying its width - In that respect it is similar to tomatoes.
Paul
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How do You handle different sizes of the same cabinet - I mean the names. Say we insert cabinet A, then another copy of the same cabinet A, but this time change the dimensions and put a different door. In the final cutlist how we gonna know which parts belong to winch cabinet? Now I'm making the copies unique and use this naming conventions - cab_part#1, for the copy cab_1_part#1
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Dear Paul,
If you could ensure that your design software applies equally to EU/UK and USA standards, then I'm sure it would be well received. In that respect, Tomatoes might be helpful in gauging the degree of conformity with EU standards. The versatility of your software should appeal to the professional kitchen cabinet designer.
Kind regards,
Bob -
That's a very good point Bob, thank-you, I will look at it again from that perspective. I think you hit the nail on the head regarding your comment about meeting different standards, it is one of my top concerns.
Paul
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