Poll: Save part editor work with doors and drawer fronts?

[Josh Rayburn]

Good Morning!

I would like doors and drawer fronts bored for 3.5" handles, which will remain the same for all cabinets in this library
This is easily accounted for with the part editor and constraint manager

However, when you want to change the materials or the edgebanding of the doors or drawer fronts, you lose all your handle holes (or any part editor work and constraints) because the only way to do it is to change the door
This is such a powerful feature, that it seems misadvertised to have to lose the work and re-apply it, which is quite frankly impractical to do on a regular basis.

My proposition is to save part editor work with a saved door or drawer front.
My alternate / second proposition is to have the ability to change the sheet stock and edgebanding stock of the door and drawer front material if it is in fact 'sheet stock.'

An example of why this is important:
Using melamine sheet stock for carcasses, but varying patterns of laminate for the doors and drawer fronts.
In this scenario, one might have to change the material name of the doors and drawer fronts such that two rooms with different color doors can be nested together. Of course the doors would be nested together if they were all offspring of the original library which has the handle holes placed and constrained.

Sure, you could just separate the two rooms into separate jobs, but I'm working way too hard to get two jobs combined at the controller to nest the melamine (which is the same for both jobs / rooms) then reload the individual TWD's for each individual job to nest the doors separately since they are different patterns of laminate material. What if I've got ten rooms? What if you don't have control nesting? You could potentially have 11 jobs, only for the purpose of figuring material usage on the combined melamine.

Another difficulty I have encountered:
- The laminate material has been laid up white on the back side of the doors but you want to lay up the front of the doors after they are cut and edgebanded.
In this case, it's wonderful that I can nest all the doors together from multiple rooms that will ultimately be a different color, yet cut from the same 'sheet stock'.
However, nothing but 'generic .5mm' edgebanding printed on the labels. So, now we have a bunch of doors from different rooms mixed together in a nest, and consequently we have no idea what banding to apply to the doors. They aren't actually colored yet because the back of all the doors is white and the front is not yet laid up.....We have rendered the labels useless unless we can change the edgebanding, such that it prints on the label as it should.

Also, a separate issue is that one room gets 1mm banding on the doors, but another room gets .5mm banding. I have no way to account for the change in door size without replacing the door or drawer front itself. When I change the doors, my handle holes are gone again....

Has anyone else encountered frustration with this scenario?
Would you all agree that this is a 'necessary' feature to be incorporated?

[Nat Wheatley]

I voted yes. I be happier, though, with the ability to add machining for metal drawers, and pulls/knobs, automatically.

[jason galbraith]

I be happier, though, with the ability to add machining for metal drawers, and pulls/knobs, automatically.

Cool can we make a poll for that? Will it be noticed?

[Josh Rayburn]

Jason,
As far as I can tell, you can make a poll for whatever you like
A little birdie told me recently that your request is in the works, but no timeframe as of yet. I imagine with the new release TWD folks are still a bit busy ironing things out but they do have that on the list for sure!
jnr

[Sean Jakob]

Josh
how did you do that poll?

[Sean Jakob]

Josh
Doesn't matter I figured it out
Thanks anyway

[Josh Rayburn]

Ut oh......what have I started?

[Neville Bastian]

Josh, You have started something we need. At the moment we just use a generic material and have to put this information on the parts label in the description area. Very messy and prone to overlooking.
The poll is looking very positive and hopefully easy for the programmers to change.
Regards

Neville

[Sean Jakob]

As Neville mentioned, this is a highly desirable feature especially for those people using metal sided drawers.

The problem is that in order to partially work around the problem front fixing hole issue, we need to create part editor cuts with contraints to place the drawer front fixing clip mounting holes in the back of the drawer fronts. I have approx 12 different libraries / cabinets combinations to cater for the altering thickness of the door (16, 18, 20), combined with edging thicknesses (0mm, 0.5mm, 1.0mm and 2.0mm) so that I dont have to add the holes during each job.

If part editor cuts were retained during material change, then I could likely reduce the number of libraries down to 4 doing away with the library variants which cater for the differing door thickness.

Of course with the advent of front fixing holes being auto applied, I believe could get away with 1 library in lieu of 12.

This is the main reason I voted for yes.

I refer you to the thread:
http://www.thermwood.com/forums/viewtop ... 8&start=30

Where I wrote:

ANOTHER SIGNIFICANT THING NOT PREVIOUSLY MENTIONED IN THIS POST
===============================================================
Changing Door Styles


I think one of the sad things here is that when you are using metal sided drawers, you are unable to utilise the "Change Door / Drawer Style" within the program.

That's right, whether it be from within layout or from the batch cabinet area, this functinoality, whilst brilliant in theory is pretty useless to those of use who are struggling with the hole pattern in the back of the drawer face problem.

You see, don't get me wrong, I'm sure all metal sided users would love to be able to use this, but the reality is that any manually placed holes into a door or drawer are lost during the process of changing door styles, so even if we have gone to the trouble of adding the holes manually, constraining them etc, we simply can afford to change the drawer style because it will take too much time to go back through and re-add all of the manually added holes.

The implication here is that those of us using metal side drawer systems generally have to create a multitude of different libraries simply to cater for different door styles. For example, I need to create an absolute minimum of 3 virtually identical libraries because I need to have doors slab style doors with 2mm edging, 1mm edging and no edging. then within each of those libraries, we need to manually add the holes to the drawer fronts in each library so we can somewhat efficiently produce a job.

I could go on an on about other implicated areas too, such as a wall over tower cabinet which has a drawer at the bottom. I end up having to create a multitude of almost identical cabinets simply because it is too cumbersome to create them on the fly. Anyway, sorry to sound like I'm bitchin, cos I ain't I would just like to see this diffulcult area bought in line with the rest of the program which is simply awesome!

[Sean Jakob]

The second reason I voted yes was related to the issue of the drilling for door and drawer pulls.

I believe that this reason needs a little more discussion in this area:

- whilst it would be brilliant to be able to have the holes for pulls survive a door/drawer change, one would need to consider:
a) - the ability to select a different handle on a job basis or one or multiple cabinet basis (from within layout, batch) and of course individually via cab editor. Note it is common place to select multiple pull types within any given job.
b) - the ability to set handle hole qty and spacing and save that info along with the handle so that handle selections automatically take care of drilling
c) - the ability to set up some sort of handle placement and orientation marker on the door in the door/dwr editor (which will oviously be different front one cabinet type to another) for example an upper cabinet from a base cabinet and of course to a drawer unit.
d) - The ability to reference the handles from either the edge or centre of the door/dwr front

food for thought

[Georgi Baltov]

Losing constraints is a problem, I agree. I meant to ask if constraint manager can be integrated with Part editor for convenience. When you cut a part you directly constraint everything to what you would like.

Having different front material and edge banding problem seems exaggerated. You obviously have different areas programed separately in twd file with different configuration for edge band which will appear on the label. All you need to do then is ask your operator to separate the areas according to label information and cabinet makers will laminate front as per area specs.

I like anything that would add more flexibility in eCabinets but then I am sure that the guys there already have quite a long list of things that will be useful. I wonder how they really make the decision which to integrate.

So guys, how do you do it?