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[Mark McCallum]

Hi Guys
Can you get the same result?

I have attached 2 cabinets because they are too big to upload as an assembly

1) load both units into the cabinet editor
2) select either cabinet and global modify any sheet material and replace with new material of the same thickness. Select either cabinet . Use c for construction settings or d for door. don't do anything. return to main. The cabinet rebuilds All should be fine.
3 ) select both units, Global modify any sheet material with the same thickness, return to cabinet editor.
select either cabinet . Use c for construction settings or d for door. don't do anything. return to main. The cabinet rebuilds, the doors will probably have lost the .tol file and be plain. both units are affected.

DF 1000.hsf

(1.62 MiB) Downloaded 815 times

DF 1000 LH.hsf

(1.71 MiB) Downloaded 1213 times

This error message appeared after I accidentally loaded 1 corrupted file in with 3 good ones and attempted to global modify the lot.

I keep on bringing this up, but why is there some random material from an earlier cabinet build still attached to the cabinet file?
If I check my materials in cut list I get a true result and no other materials.
When I nest sheets in ecabs its not nested.
But in global modification these phantom materials are getting read from a data set attached to the file.
In this case its the 16.2mm colourboard that is not there.
To my way of thinking all old materials should be purged from the cabinet data and the material list should only be the materials actually used in the cabinet.
Perhaps the data like the part editor cuts and hole patterns, in certain situations are getting assigned to the phantom material, therefor breaking the cabinet.
I have just tested this with 2 times with 2 other units with part editor cuts to the doors with the same results

Any feed back appreciated
Thanks
Mark

[Rob Davis]

Mark and others,
Sorry being late to this party but because eCabinets runs pretty well for us, I don't go to Forum that often.
We determined long ago that eCabinets was production software in our shop and not presentation software so we use it to create machining and not worry about making it pretty. We had problems when we added drawer boxes and pulls/knobs in order to make pretty pictures for customers and it just seemed to bog down and to create all kinds of errors. Been a while ago though since we tried so maybe with improved memory and programming some of this is alleviated. (In its defense, we never got good at drawer boxes on system so it likely could be things we were doing. ) We do not make drawer boxes on CNC anyways so no real reason to have them in eCabs.
We use other software for presentations mostly because we already have it in house and if we need to use eCab for presentation, we prepare the customer that it is not going to be picture perfect since we omit drawer boxes, etc.
Like all of you custom craftsmen, we make lots of unique things and so any time we get pretty far off the "cabinet" shape, we use Mastercam so we can make crazy shapes. Maybe we could do some of it in eCab but Mastercam is better to do the wild stuff.

Random bugs we've faced are material changes / lost data, we had a cbient with 2 left ends that drove us nuts for about a week, and random other flukes, mostly caused by something we were doing

We do make drawer boxes for our outdoor line which is made from polymer material on the cnc and we do it by making them as a separate cabinet without doors. We put all the predrill holes for assembly in them plus contours and just was easier to do it that way so we can resize them quickly and with constraints they come out correct every time.

Bottom line is we love eCab because we have Thermwood machines and there is never the software guy saying it is the machine's fault or vice versa. It has also done a lot of work for us over the years and we'd been lost without it. And it is free!!!

Just my 2 pence. We did do this wine rack in eCabs

[Mark McCallum]

Hi Rob
Thanks for your feedback.
Nice wine rack......... (Where is all the wine? )
I agree its very good software, super good most of the time. I feel so much pleasure with all the work we put into programing a job, and it just cuts everything out, and its like, Wow, that's just amazing! its like magic, We do work now that we would never have considered doing by hand because time wise, money wise, it would have been unfeasible.
All without us having any clue on how to program, The technical stuff in the back end that writes all the tool pathing straight from Ecabs is a huge time saver.

Its just that there's been this little glitch in there for a couple of years where part editor cuts and or runner or KD holes randomly just disappear. Every things just fine... until its not.
Often it doesn't get noticed until after the job is cut. If we could just tidy that up it would be very reliable.

I hear you when you say " it is probably something we are doing that has caused the issue" you do get a feel for what might cause trouble or learn a different way to do the job that causes less trouble.

I have "learned" The software trains you how to use it, you don't train the software to do new things

Drawer boxes with drawer fronts, runner and handle holes seem to work very well for us, It could be worth revisiting as I consider it one of the big benefits of the software, drawers behind doors have given us "fun" but that may be our technique.

Also, like you, we very rarely bother any more with the kitchen presentation side, It takes us too long to get the job right, Its probably us, but customers have no idea how long it takes to get it nice and then they just change something that take hours to get right again. 4 to 6 hours or more on 3d drawings doesn't excite me anymore.
Like you I lower the customers expectations on 3d output.
The best part of the program these days to us is the Batch cabinet area and global modification, that is super useful.