Proper procedure for material resize prior to creating TWD

[Gary Campbell]

Can anyone enlighten myself and a new owner on the proper procedure of changing material with a "generic" thickness of .75" to actual of .71 on batch jobs? Is there any difference when job is custom layout?

I cut a few small jobs with not problems, then new owner did another, with thickness error. I then tried to show him the procedure, and was not able to get change to "stick" or show up in eCabs nest. Does this change ever show up in the eCabs nesting feature, or is it only adjusted when TWD is processed by the Link?

(files not avalable)
Thanks in advance

[Jeremy Schiffer]

When doing a thickness change for a TWD file, the ecabinets materials are unaffected. The change only applies to the TWD file you're creating.
Course, I'm not sure what the exact procedure is for a shopbot, but I'm guessing it's pretty much the same as writing a TWD to go to a Thermwood router.

[Gary Campbell]

Jeremy...
Thanks for the reply... I just reread ths in the "almost complete guide" and it is still somewhat vague. Can I assume that the material thickness adjustment is made just prior to saving the TWD?

[Jeremy Schiffer]

Right. The change is made, the cabinets are regenerated with the new material thicknesses taken into account, the TWD is written. It's a one-time thing. Your ecabs material database (as well as the job) is unchanged*. If you go to write the TWD file again, you'll find you need to change the material thickness again as well. At least, this is my experience of how it seems to work. If I'm wrong, hopefully someone will chime in.



*now for the asterisk: When I say "unchanged" I mean USUALLY unchanged. I've found that having hardware (knobs and pulls) on the cabinets screws up the TWD creation process somehow. As it regenerates the cabinets while changing the material thicknesses, every door/drawer that has a pull on it will cause a dialog box to pop up saying "Please select a door/drawer combination to add pulls to!" where you must click "OK" to continue. After several of these, eCabinets usually will crash, and I have had it trash my job file in the process. Soooo..... now before creating a TWD, I always save a duplicate version of the job without pulls on the doors and add "cnc" to the filename before creating the TWD from it.

[Gary Campbell]

Jeremy...
Thanks for the explanation. I have been doing this on a regular basis, but didnt quite know how to instruct Steve. When I looked it up in the guide I was left slightly more confused. I do very little with pulls or any other display type items as eCabs feels "clunky" at best when in custom layout or LDE. IT cuts cabinets well with my jointery from a batch, so I leave the display & drawing to Apps that do it better. This may be either by design or my inexperience, and I am sure the "old hands" will disagree, but since most of our work comes from designers, I dont need "all the color"

[Jeremy Schiffer]

I'd definitely rather not have the hardware slowing the program down, but when we show a design to a client it is much easier for them to tell which way a door opens if it has a handle on it. Plus, it shows up on the buy list so we know how many to get. But man oh man, it sure makes creating a TWD file a pain.

Interestingly, I don't recall anyone else mentioning this problem. I wonder if there's a trick around it that I'm not aware of...

[Dennis Englert]

Thanks for the indirect reference to "The Guide". It basically goes through the mechanics of changing the material thickness, but does not note the inference of that change.

Looking at Jeremey's response I can add a note to that page for Version 6 that reference's the recommendations to use a job file that is void of pulls and notes that changing the material thickness does not permanently change the job file. It only affects the .twd file created as result of this action. If the job file is re-CNC'd, the cabinets are still the original material thickness and any material change requirements would need to be identified and adjusted for the new .twd file.

If there any other possible notes that I should include on this topic in "The Nearly Complete Guide to eCabinet Systems" please send an email to training@thermwood.com. Or PM me. Any input is appreciated. As stated above the guide goes primarily through the mechanics of using the software. You are the folks that are recipients of the "Lessons Learned" factor. Not something that I would gain since I'm not a production user.

Again, thanks for the input. I'll note it for the next version of the Guide.


Dennis Englert
Manager of Product Training
Thermwood Corporation