Hi Mathew,

Glad you’re enjoying CabWriter so far. Your file did not upload apparently because it was too large, but I am familiar with the concept of nailers with a 1/4″ back. We’ve never gotten a request for that, so we’ve not gone there. We’ve always had to be cautious about what we implement in order to keep the cost of CabWriter so low, so we typically add things that are requested by a quorum of our customers, so I can’t promise we’ll be able to do so. To some degree, this is the same as our philosophy on drawing biscuit slots and things like that. As long as you can draw the sides and back properly with the inset, I assume you’ll just cut the nailers to size and install when you build the cabinets, so maybe you could get by without actually having them drawn in? I realize they wouldn’t be on the cutlist, but I would imagine you make up a bunch of nailer material and just cut it to size as needed, but maybe you do it differently.

As an aside, I spent almost 15 years running a cabinetmaking school and one of the perks was getting to visit quite a large number of high end custom cabinet shops over the years and that really shaped my construction methods over the years. I got to incorporate a lot of the best practices that I observed over the years. One of the best things I learned was to use 1/2″ backs, with the simplest solution being to just screw them on, although a lot of people also put them in a groove with a rabbet on the backs themselves. This seems like it costs more because 1/2″ material is more than 1/4″, but the savings in labor with not having to deal with the nailers typically makes up for the more expensive material. The other nice side benefit is that you can screw through any part of the back, not just the nailers. I wrote up an article and did a video on my construction methods if you’re interested. It’s on our website at: https://cabwritersoftware.com/education/cabinet-construction/

I’ve made some minor changes to the method over the years, but for the most part, it’s the same. For example, now I’m using the plastic euro legs instead of the ladder base, but the backs are still the same. Not trying to change your methods, but it’s something to think about. We’ll add the nailers to our list of potential features, but like I mentioned, I can’t guarantee anything.

Thanks,
Greg

Hi Anthony,

As I mentioned above, we basically do already support it, we just don’t draw the nailers. You can choose to inset a 1/4″ back into rabbets on the carcass sides and top/bottom as far back as you want to accommodate the nailers. I wouldn’t think the nailers would need to be drawn to show customers, but only for construction, right? I also assume you just cut up what you need for nailers when you’re putting together the cabinet, so it wouldn’t be that critical to have CabWriter draw them in? Given our price point, we simply can’t add everything for every construction method out there, so we’ve had to make calculated choices. That said, you can easily use SketchUp tools to draw in the nailers if you need them for your assemblers to see; that’s one of the reasons we built on top of SketchUp because we aren’t able to draw everything automatically, so it gives users the flexibility to use SketchUp Tools to add anything else you might need to the drawing.

In what way do you want to modify the toe kick construction? Do you have an example you can show us?

Thanks,
Greg