[cabwriter]

Hi Richard,
I got it now! I couldn’t picture it because I never setup for that combination before. In the top picture, I would say you have the setting on the Base (or Upper) Cabinets tab called Side Position set to “Captured”. In the second photo, it looks like the setting is set to “Outside”. Basically, the job of this setting is to indicate whether you want the cabinet constructed with the top and bottom captured between the sides or have the sides captured by the top and bottom. I don’t understand why it would randomly draw it one way or the other. It should be dependent on the state of that setting. Could you check and see what it’s set to?

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hi Richard,
I’m not sure I fully understand what you’re describing. Do you have a SketchUp model you could zip up and send to Joe and I? It might be easier to visualize what you’re describing…

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hi Brandon,

That’s exactly right! Let me know if you have any further questions…

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hi Brandon,

Indeed, you are asking it correctly and I know what you’re trying to do. I’ve had two projects in the past year where I’ve had the same need. We are looking to add this feature in CabWriter 3.0, but in the meantime, the only solution is to use native tools if you need to pull the rails and stiles above the top of the cabinet. If you want to add an additional scribe allowance to show up on the cutlist, you can select all of the parts and open the Extended Entity Window and manually add additional width to the rails and additional length to the stiles.

I hope this makes sense; let me know if you have other questions. Do you have CabWriter Home or Pro, or are you evaluating the free trial?

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hi Jeremy,

Sure, you can call me at 413-561-3284. I teach in the morning, but you can call anytime after lunch.

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hi Jeremy,

Can you give us a bit more information? What do you mean by “update” and it changes back? Are you saying that you draw a cabinet, then decide to change the stile width and re-draw it and it works, but then when you do something else, it reverts back?
If you could give us a more detailed list of the steps you’re doing, we may be able to help debug what’s going on. I haven’t run into anything like that, but might not be doing the same sequence.

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hi Mark,

Sorry you ran into a stumbling block. The location for the user default storage is set on the Project tab in the CabWriter Defaults. See the enclosed picture. You can choose a folder anywhere on your Mac to save the defaults in. You can see where I save mine, but you can choose any folder by clicking on the folder icon at the right of the text box.

Let me know if you have any other questions…

Thanks,
Greg

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[cabwriter]

Hi Jeremy,

I don’t personally use it for estimating. I have a set of spreadsheets that I’ve created over the years to help me. I’m sure Cutlist Plus would work, I just haven’t had the time or motivation to go there.

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hi Jeremy,

I think Cutlist Plus is well regarded in terms of those functions; it would be worth a look. The only rendering software I’ve played with is one called Twilight, which one of our other customers uses. All of the rendering software is very involved and I just haven’t had time to master it. They have a free version and a paid version; I’ve just played with the free one. I got it to render, but haven’t yet got the hang of doing the proper lighting and material setup.

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hi,

We don’t have any plans to build an estimating tool into CabWriter; it’s out of the scope of what we set out to do and there are other tools out there. The one to look at it Cutlist Plus fx. In addition to advanced cutlisting features, plywood optimization, and label printing, it also has a robust estimating and costing functionality to help you track your labor, material, and other project costs.

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

I agree with Joe. I would vote for just a cabinet lock/unlock in the context menu because of the sub menu and complexity problem, plus I don’t think it’s a big deal to unlock the whole cabinet, do what you need to do, the re-lock it if you want to.

My 2 cents, but looking for other comments…

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hey Guys,

Basically, we already have the ability to select any number of components or any part of a cabinet we want and then we essentially have a button to unlock them which is SketchUp’s right click and Unlock in the context menu, so not sure how useful another button in CabWriter would be to perform that same function, but something Matt said makes sense. How about in the right click context menu there is a lock/unlock cabinet function? If you click on a part of a locked cabinet, the context menu will show “Unlock Cabinet” and if it’s already unlocked, it’ll say “Lock Cabinet”. I could see that being pretty handy; you unlock a cabinet when you’re about to mess with it, then lock it when you’re done. That way you don’t have to keep locking and unlocking individual parts of the cabinet.

Matt, does that work for you, or were you thinking something different?

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hi Matt,

Interesting suggestion. I’m not sure the “Select Cabinet” options would work quite as well on the menu bar because of the sub-menus for selecting sub-components. Do you think it would be better there on the menu bar than the Right Click menu where it is now? That seems the most convenient to me. Are you more interested in the unlock function? In other words, a select and unlock combined function? Right now, you have to do it in two steps. I agree that most of the time when you’re selecting a cabinet or sub-component that you want to unlock it as well to do something with it, but not all the time.

If you can give us a little more information on the work flow you’re thinking about, maybe there’s something we can do.

Thanks,
Greg

[cabwriter]

Hi Kevin,

I can’t speak for what might be common, but in my case, I got charged the standard shop rate for their shop; keep in mind that includes their time to process the files and create the tool paths plus machining. Seems like that would be a relatively common approach. In my case, since I knew him well, I came in and helped load and pack parts, which saved time. Around here, the shop rate is typically in the neighborhood of $75 – $85. I did 16 sheets in two hours of software time and two hours of machining time, for example.

Good luck,
Greg

[cabwriter]

My advice would be to meet with them and ask the about their expectations from you in terms of what to supply and in what format. If you had a CabWriter design, I would show it to them and explain what features you’ll be cutting with the CNC, then export the DXF’s for the design and have them take a look at it.

I did exactly this with a friend of mine who own’s a large Biesse CNC at his shop. I supplied him with the DXF files; he nested and created tool paths for the sheets. Then, we simulated running the parts by keeping the tool above the sheet before running it for real to make sure that it was doing what I thought it would for each sheet. We did this the first time; after that, I trusted it and we just ran the parts. No problems at all.

Hope this helped a little…

Thanks,
Greg

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