Sizing Bug.

[Damon Nabors]

I build most of my cabinets with pre-finished plywood, uv both sides, and face frames. If it is a contractor grade cabinet, the contractors usually do not want to pay for raised panel end panels and such. In my case I will cut a 1/4" skin and skin the finished end of the cabinet since I can not finish it, due to the pre finished plywood. Works out good because I do not have to take the cabinet into the finish room, all I have to do is spray the frames, doors, skins, molding etc.

Here is the problem I found (the hard way) , before in 5.1, I would take the cabinet and delete all the parts except for the left or right side that I needed and change the material to 1/4". If for instance I had a 24" deep cabinet, when I deleted the face frame, the side would change from 23.25" to 24" since the face frame is no longer there and it is a 24" deep cabinet. I would have to then change the cabinet to a 23.25" cabinet to regain the proper size of the end panel.

In 5.2 if you have a 24" deep cabinet with 3/4" thick face frame, you should have a side that is 23.25" deep. Now when you delete all the parts except for the left or right side, the cabinet does not re-size to compensate the face frame being removed. I removed my face frames on a 16" deep cabinet assuming it would make the size of the end panel 16" (w/o frame) then changed the cabinet depth to 15.25" so that the end panel would fit my cabinet and the damn thing sized it to 14.5" thinking it still had the face frame. Not measuring every individual part thinking they would be correct, I send the skins to the paint room, paint and glaze them, and then bring them out to find out that they are 3/4" too shallow.

The crazy thing about it is , it doesn't do it on every cabinet. I have some of them that cut OK and some that did not. Does this mean I have to measure every individual part prior to finishing or assembly?

Now I am really confused, I just wanted to go back and look at this cabinet again before posting this to make sure I have not lost my mind, I took the original cabinet prior to deleting the parts to get the skins, and now it is working fine. I do have the skins posted here so maybe someone can take a look at them and see what is going on. It really eats up the profit when you have to cut twice, material is not cheep any more.

I also have mdf doors that do not cut (profile modeler), I sent the job to the programmers either Friday or Monday, I would have to go back and look, but I still haven't heard anything other than wanting to know if I am using Vista.

I guess this is turning into a Negative post, Forgive me , but I am a little right now since it is the 10th of the month and I am writing out bills and sending off my payment.

Like I said, forgive me for being negative but I either need some help with this job or I need to start making the doors the old fashioned way again so I can get this one out the door.

Damon

[Leo Graywacz]

Why don't you just build the cabinets with the skins as part of the cabinet. Then you wouldn't need to do all the extra work. Use a display panel at the correct size, making sure to associate the panel to the cabinet before saving it. You can use the nodes to easily align the panel to the respective side it needs to attach to. This will show up in the parts list and nesting. If you name your material 'SKINS' it will make it that much easier to find it in the nesting.

[Damon Nabors]

Leo,

I find that there are so many different ways to build cabinets and save them, That I try different methods from time to time to just see what works best for me. I don't think I have the best way by any means. I pick up tips from users on the forum and I try to incorporate some of them into my own system to try and better manage my time. I have found that If I save the skin in its own Library called skins, I can just batch them when needed. Sometimes I may not need the skin depending on the situation. I will normally just save the cabinet with out the skin and if I should need the skin, it is easier for me to just go to the construction settings and apply a scribe to either the left or right in the amount of the skin material thickness I am using. Then all I have to do is cut it and attach the skin after it is finished.

By deleting the parts, I know the toe kick and every thing is going to line up correctly. Or it is supposed to.

I have been doing it this way for quite some time now and it has been working great. Once the skin is set up in the library, you don't really have a lot to do after that. You can use that skin on other cabinets as well if the toe, depth, and height are the same.

I am just finding that some of my parts are not cutting correct since the update. I am a Beta Tester, and designed a lot of cabinets for testing, but I never did cut them with the Beta version to see if they worked correctly.

I have another cabinet in the same batch that did not cut correct. I allowed a scribe of .21 to accept the skin and after making the face frame and assembling the cabinet, I found that I only had 3/32 allowance for the skin. I had to run my skin through the planer to make it work. No problem, but it should have worked, and it has been working.

I am finding that all the cabinets in the normal room layout are cutting as designed, but all my problems are showing up with the cabinets in the Batch Area. I think there is a problem with this area. Some of the problems will not duplicate either. The skin I posted, I can not get it to act up again. The actual skin I have saved has a problem, but if I take the cabinet that the skins were created off of and try to redo the skins, they are correct.

I still think this is the greatest software out on the market, I just think the new version was released too soon. Those of you without machines will never know any difference, the cabinets look as they are supposed to, its when you take it to the machine that I am having problems with some of the cabinets. Not all but some, and that is what is so troubling because I can not predict the outcome at this point.

Any way, I am just curious if anyone else has experienced any problems or maybe this is an isolated case. Hopefully so.

Damon

[Damon Nabors]

Leo,

Sorry for the additional post, but my mind is going in so many different directions. It is great having the router because I am able to get out so much more work than before. My mind is in overload most of the time because for the most part my shop is a 2 person shop and I have to spend so much time designing the cabinets at night because there is not enough time during the day. What use to take us a month to get out, we are cutting a full house of cabinets every week. Those of you out there that say you can't afford a router, you need to look at how much time you are spending. For me, every job I do is profitable, it just depended on how much of the month eat up the profit. Any way that is not why I came back on, I just thought I would add a little positive to my problem.



The reason I like using the actual side of the cabinet as the skin rather than a display panel, is because I can re-size the skin if needed. Just change the depth and/or height and viola, you have a new skin with out having a lot of problems. Sometimes on an island cabinet I will have my electrical outlets already programed in so I do not have to cut them in on site, or the dreaded electrician. ( I had to redo a cabinet last week because the owner decided they wanted to place a microwave in one of the cabinets and the electrician takes a sawzall with a 12" blade flapping back and forth and tries to cut an electrical outlet hole in the back of the cabinet with it still attached to the wall. Made one hell of a mess) The way I have my skins programmed, My outlet holes will line up perfectly with out a lot of parts editor cuts on display panels.

But, like I said Leo, do what ever works best in your situation. I certainly do not have all the answers and don't think I ever will.

[Scott G Vaal]

Damon,

Sorry for the late response here, but we have been looking into your issues that you have mentioned in this post (including the Profile modeler cab number issue and stray display panel in your job file “Lot 378 Bayou Vista.esj” ).

First, lets start with the cabinet not being sized correctly for Face Frames being removed. From your clues posted here, we believe that we have chased this issue down. It is the path that is taken to return a cabinets to the batch.
If you:
*) Take a framed cabinet from batch to the cabinet editor
*) Be in the face frame editor and remove the face frame components and do NOT return to the cabinet editor main area.
*) Select the batch cabinets icon on the Main tool bar, answer Yes to apply changes to batch, and then answer NO to the question “would you like to change this cabinet to a frameless cabinet?”
These steps will cause your situation. This is a hole that we will resolve, but existed in 5.1 as well. For now, make sure that you select Yes if using these steps, or just return to the main cabinet editor area first then select Return to Batch.

Second, We cannot reproduce the stray display panel issue in your job file “Lot 378 Bayou Vista.esj”. We can fix it here by deleting the cabinets “Fireplace right” and “Fireplace right-MOD1” and re-loading it into the batch. (Please let me know if this does not work for you). We will continue to keep an eye out for this situation. Please let us know if it happens again or if you have any more information as to the steps that make it happen.

Third, the misalignment of cabinet numbers in Profile Modeler is a result of having both cabinets in the custom layout and batch area. This is a Profile Modeler issue and is not related to 5.2. I have listed this and it will be addressed in a future update for PM. However, although the numbers do not match, my tests here show that they will be machined correctly. If you need the labels to match, I would suggest saving the batch cabinets as a separate job until we get an update of PM.

Hope this helps and sorry for any inconveniences.