Is there a way to select several cabinets and only edit one item across all cabinets without effecting everything else?

There used to be a plugin for an older version but I cannot seem to find it

@dave r said:

Sounds like you already have a decent arrangement.

If only I could swap out all at once. Right now it is quite the time sink to replace them all that way

I've downloaded a few plugins that have the capability but I do not know how they do it.

Some are just hiding them (which my old library was doing). I am just worried about model sizing going that route.

Maybe you are correct and I should simplify it a bit

@dave r said:

Thanks for completing your profile. That's helpful.

There isn't a way to swap out all of the doors like that natively but it might be that an extension could do it. To make it work I expect you'd need to have doors of matching dimensions. So you might have in your model doors called Mbevel_15, Mbevel_18, etc. And the extension could replace them with Shkr_15, Shakr_18, etc. You'd still have to deal with custom door sizes on an individual basis.

Dynamic Components might be an option however you'd still need to handle them individually.

As for the designs and high quality renders, it can be done but you'll want to consider how much detail is really useful. The edge profile on rails and stiles won't be shown in an image of the entire wall of cabinets. For that sort of thing a close up of one door might be more appropriate. You could have separate highly detailed versions to use as samples and leave the components for the overall kitchen as lighter, lower detailed ones. That'll also help with performance in the overall kitchen model. Kind of the same idea as you apply to the kitchen appliances.

If you do those close up views of the doors, those renders could be saved and used for future projects. Maybe the renders get used on a "mood board" page with images of tiles or wood samples.

Right now I already have the doors able to automatically resize based on what they are swapping out. They are dynamic components themselves

So my process at the moment.

A made a highly customized dynamic cabinet that can be easily manipulated to make any type of cabinet I want with our most common door style, Mbevel. I use this with settings locked to quickly create a full library.

To change the door I move down two levels. The first level is any empty component with the door sizing, the 2nd is the dynamic door Mbevel. I swap out the dynamic door with any of the other doors in my door style folder. All doors reference the parent for sizing

@dave r said:

What version of SketchUp are you using? What operating system? The answers to those questions will help us help you. Please complete your forum profile with that information.

In general you can create collections of components and you can swap components. Most of the case work I model is one-off stuff so I don't bother with collections of things like doors. I do have collections of hardware like drawer and door pulls. I've created the components so that they all have the same relative origin and axis orientation. That makes them easy to insert in the first place and if I want to swap one drawer pull for a different one, it's a trivial thing. Go to Components, right click on the existing one and choose Select Instances. Then right click on the one you want to swap in and choose Replace Instances. This could be done with cabinet doors and drawer fronts if you wanted.

The key thing for making this work easily is planning for it in the way you structure your models. The Select Instances/Replace Selected process only works in the current context. If you bury your door pulls inside nested components, you have to burrow in to where the pull can be selected before you can replace it.

As for different door styles, I would generally tend to keep them fairly simple. Shaker doors--rectangular section rails and stiles and a flat panel. Raised panel with generic ogee profile on the inside, and maybe a tombstone style door. If you are making these models to show clients, don't bother with highly detailed doors. Those profiles and other small details won't show anyway. Either use close up photos of the profiles or draw cross sections of the profiles that you can show at full size in your LayOut document.

Unless you are limiting your work to just a couple of wood species, I wouldn't bother making collections based on that. I would just apply the materials as needed. For many of my clients I don't bother with wood grain materials at all since it's impossible to exactly match the grain and color to what they will get in the finished product. I just use simple colors that imply the color of the wood. It's faster to apply and easier to change.

Added to my profile.

What you are describing is what I have now with items hidden. 1 rail type, 2 panel types, or a slab. I then have either a knob or a bar pull. Colours are manually changed after

My designers are having a lot of requests to see the style of door on the designs and high quality renderings.

With what I have started I am able to swap out any style individually. I am just wondering if there was a way to do this for all instances at once.

Ie. look for all components named Mbevel and swap to a shaker somehow either automatically or from the user just selecting from a folder like a single swap

For colors I will still have that manually changed after. I changed it to have by default 2 colours shown, one for vertical grain, one for horizontal grain with an option for an accent colour that creates another set of 2 colours. So then it is just a matter of eye dropping to a wood or paint texture I have that accurate to what we produce

Hello Everyone,

I have a library I made for kitchen designs. It works fine but I am hoping to create a new robust library with more door styles, handles, etc. My original components simply had a shaker style door and a slab door that was just toggled on/off as hidden attributes.

I am just wondering what the best way to approach this if I want to put more detailed styles with grain direction and the like and have several different profiles. I can do it as a hidden but I read that doing a swap was best but there was not a very good description on how to achieve this.

Also, there used to be an extension that would allow you to select every cabinet and only modify the one attribute across (ie. handle type) without messing up the rest of the attributes.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you