[cabwriter]

Hi,

Sorry to hear that you’re still having issues. Sorry for the slow response, both Joe and I are attending a conference through this weekend, so Joe will respond with more information later.

It’s curious that it’s happening on a totally new installation in Windows 7 because Joe suspects the problem is related to a SketchUp bug that affects plugins. Do you have a way of installing SketchUp 2015 on your Mac? That’s what I’ve been using for the past couple of years and have never experienced the problem. Also, if you have a error message dump from your Windows 7 installation, that would help as well.

Sorry for the troubles, but thanks for working with us to help solve it. Joe will be back to you later today with more info.

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Joe is probably best to answer this one, but he’s traveling this morning, so he won’t be available until later today. However, did you do a clean install as described in the document I sent and started with a new file? If you don’t clean out the old software, there could be some conflicts due to the shear number of changes that were made from the last version. Let us know if that works or if you’ve already done it…

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hi Bela,

Thanks for the additional model, I see how you do it now. Just curious, do you ever use a separate ladder base for your cabinets? I find them a bit easier to level when the cabinets are on a separate base; I’ve never tried your method and am curious as to the advantages. We look forward to seeing more models from you next week…

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hi Bela,
Glad you like the interface, sorry about the bottom rail problem; coincidentally, we just discovered that yesterday as well. Since I haven’t been doing a lower rail, we didn’t test that option well enough. It’s on our list to fix. On the uppers, there’s a bottom inset parameter, which we need to add to the lowers as well.

Thanks for the model; we’ll study it to see how it works with what we have. On first glance, it looks like it could just about be done now, once the bottom rail issue gets fixed. You would essentially draw it with a smaller bottom rail and no toe kick, but taller cabinets, then just pull the lower rail and cabinet sides down to the floor. There might be a little manual touch up here and there around the toe kick on the sink, but I think the rest of it is quite doable.

Do you often build with no toe kicks?

Thanks for the feedback,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hi Bela,

The bottom rail will be no problem. We are getting ready to release a new version of the software that finally allows anyone to easily change all of the defaults, so you’ll be able to set the defaults any way you want. So, you’ll be able to set it up to your liking, then save those defaults for any of your designs moving forward. Sorry about the default that way, here at my cabinetmaking school, we leave the bottom rail of the face frame off because it simplifies things so much and then the bottom of the cabinet acts as a door stop and we don’t have to worry about that rail hanging down when we’re moving cabinets around. It works well with a separate ladder base for the toe kick.

Do you build all of your cabinets with an integrated toe kick? If you have a long run of cabinets, do you build individual cabinets when you have an integrated toe kick and screw them together, or is it one long run with an integrated face frame with an integrated toe kick? We don’t yet support the integrated toe kick. It’s been lower priority because we’ve been focusing on separate toe bases because they lend themselves better to the long runs of cabinets with integrated face frames. Do you ever build that way?

Is there any chance you could add to the model you sent and show what you would do for a longer run of base cabinets? I’d also be curious to see a run of upper cabinets. Then, we could get an idea of what we need to add into the software moving forward.

[cabwriter]

Hi John,

You’re right that it can get kind of daunting with the large number of parts in a kitchen. As Joe mentions, it’s practically pretty difficult to transmit a color to either a spreadsheet or to Cutlist Plus which would have to be changed. However, I think you would be able to accomplish what you want without colors.

If you look at the attached screenshot, you’ll see that there are two columns that CabWriter populates that get sent to Cutlist Plus. One is Sub-assembly, and the other is Description. The sub assembly column can either contain the SketchUp layer or the sub-assembly attribute which is something like C3LFF, which is also part of the description. In this example, the sub-assembly column is the layer name and the description contains the attributes. This means that you could sort your cutlist by layer, which would be upper or lower carcass, face frame, doors, drawers, etc. Also, you can use the attributes for sorting. C3LFF means cabinet #3 lower face frame rail. So, you can sort by cabinet number or type of part or both, which is pretty powerful. After that, you can sort by thickness, width, and length, of course. This means you could isolate just the face frame parts, for example, and further by upper and lower if you want, then also sort by cabinet if you choose to. I think this would accomplish the same thing as sorting by color, but much easier to implement. Give it a try when you get the software and see if that would work for you.

Thanks,
Greg

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[cabwriter]

Hi Bela,

Thanks for the detailed feedback. Some of the features are already in there or planned, but are not exposed yet until we get the user interface working so you can change parameters. You should see that next week and be able to give it a try. We’ll put the other requests on the list for prioritization; they all make sense. Thanks for the input; we’ll let you know when there’s a new version to try. It’s hard now because you can’t change rail sizes and so on very easily like you will with the new version…

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hi Todd,

While toe kick drawers are definitely a feature that a lot of custom cabinetmakers implement, it’s not super common, so this would likely be one of those features that we’ll have to leave out of CabWriter, at least in the foreseeable future. As Joe mentioned in another post, in order to keep this as a low cost software package, we just can’t implement every conceivable option that could be drawn in a kitchen. There are packages that do this, but as you probably know, they cost tens of thousands of dollars. We want to capture the majority of common construction methods and cabinet types that we can draw parametrically. The beauty of being built on top of Sketchup is that you have a powerful drawing program at hand to draw any remaining features that aren’t drawn automatically. We feel that this can give us the best of both worlds. Over time, as the software matures, we can look at more features to add while still remaining affordable.

Greg

[cabwriter]

Welcome aboard, Wayne! We look forward to your feedback once you’ve had a chance to use the software. BTW, what do you currently use for CAM software for your CNC? Do you currently have something that you can use to tool path DXF’s? If not, I would highly recommend Vectric’s software. Their Cut2D Pro is very affordable and will do everything you need for cabinetmaking. It’s what I use in the overview video on our site. You can get a free trial version at http://www.vectric.com/products/cut2d/trial.html. You can do everything with it except save a tool path. Also, what kind of CNC do you have.

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hi David,

Thanks for the feedback; it’s one of the highest priority features that we have for CabWriter moving forward. If you’re willing, one thing that would help us out is to have you create a model of a few cabinets that reflects your construction methods. If you could draw some walls with lowers and uppers and modify the CabWriter model so that it reflects exactly how you would build it, including fillers, then we can make sure we’re covering all of the bases. The more models we can get of other build methods, the better we can tailor CabWriter moving forward. If you are using a different joinery method for boxes that CabWriter doesn’t do and it’s too time consuming to draw, you could just describe that or any other things that aren’t captured in your model.

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hi Kevin,

Just responding to your Aspire comment, you’re right, it’s pretty pricey, but if you’re just cutting carcass parts you can use Cut2D Pro; it’s only $450 and does everything you need if you’re just doing 2D cutting, drilling, pocketing, etc. That’s one of the next pages to go up on the website where I explain that. I cut a kitchen recently using it and it worked great.

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