RN and other cab software

Forrest Chapman · Post by **Forrest Chapman** » Tue, Oct 11 2005, 9:10PM

Hello Everyone,

To go along with Paul's DXF posting is anyone useing other cabinet design software with rolling nest? I'm curious as to what exactly is needed from these programs. If they will produce a cutlist will this be in a format that RN reads? My Easy Link contains what I would presume to be a post for CV and KCDw however I don't know exactly what these programs must do in order to link. I have some customers who have other programs they prefer and would like parts cut. I also have a full version of Cabinet Vision that I would like to try running in rolling nest. There are some things I like about RN better than what CV produces. To go along with that there are alot of things I like about ecabs more than CV. Hope someday soon ecabs has all the abilities and more than CV. I'd really like to give CV the finger.

Thanks for all the great info,

Forrest

Nick M Singer · Post by **Nick M Singer** » Tue, Oct 11 2005, 11:52PM

I too would like the skinny on this. i have tried to out put CV DXF data to Easy link to no avail. I think it is only capable of handling one item at a time as you would if you produced a shape in Auto Cad or whatever. You can also produce singe bounded objects in CV and these would be processed by Easy Link, but not a whole cabinets worth. I imagine if you wanted to run a whole job generated by CV you would have to generate the code in that application and put it to the controller software without using rolling nest.

Post by **Jason Susnjara** » Wed, Oct 12 2005, 7:32AM

Hi Guys,

CV has a dxf export depending on what options you have. There should be a place to change the layer names within CV. Then CV will export the job with every part as a dxf file. You will then load the dxf files into RN/EL. So far, Cabnetware is the only software that does not work with RN/EL.

Forrest Chapman · Post by **Forrest Chapman** » Wed, Oct 12 2005, 8:40AM

Thanks, Jason

I will call CV and find out what versions will export.

Nick,

If you figure it out let me know. It sounds like it may be more trouble than its worth on my end at this time since I do have a full version. My customers however may have to use this. Still can't wait for V5 ecabs.

Forrest

Jeff Norris · Post by **Jeff Norris** » Wed, Oct 12 2005, 10:42AM

good luck getting any answers from cabinet vision. it is my understanding that you will need the nc center add on to get batch dxf files from cv, many more dollars. the standard dxf output is only one part at a time, you will have to select every part one at a time and save the files, this will not give you any time improvments. i did give cv the finger when ecabs version 4 came out, before that i was doing layouts in cv and using ecabs to make the parts.too much room for error. i am considering moving on to pytha from ecabs because of all the bugs that i dont have time for. so im trying to answer the same questions regarding pytha.

Forrest Chapman · Post by **Forrest Chapman** » Wed, Oct 12 2005, 1:45PM

Hey Jeff,

Unfortunatly I already have invested over 30,000.00 in CV for machining purposes. Yet they still want more money year after year. If ecabs had the features that CV has I wouldn't be useing CV. There are far to many bugs and nonfunctioning issues with CV. I've found ecabs on a certain level to be more reliable. I have the capabilities to convert a CV job file from another user and add construction methods then right g-code. At least thats what they told us, could be another fib. What I like about RN is the ability to make at machine changes in setup and to let the guys renest bad parts themselves. Also it leaves useing offall up to them. The final straw between us and CV was the release of V4CV. We paid $1800.00 for the tech support and the upgrade was promised within 6 months. 18 months later we received V4 just in time for our support to run out. Guess what V4 was a flop and even when they do get it fixed we would have to pay for TS to get the new build. As far as I know, no one is useing it yet.

Thanks for all the help,
Forrest

Jeff Norris · Post by **Jeff Norris** » Thu, Oct 13 2005, 9:14AM

im glad i bought a copy second hand for a steal, or i would be really upset with cabinet vision. i cant imagine trying to get good code from cv. cv is totally oppisite from ecabs. i was useing cv for layouts and ecabs for machining but it left too much room for error so with version 4 i dumped cv, but im spending far too much time with ecabs, im not sure i can wait for it to be refined, im looking at other alternatives.