How to update assembly components?

[Daren LaBranche]

Howdy all, I'm interested in your two-cents worth.

I'm wondering if/how anyone out there uses assemblies? I'm sure there's some of you, and I'd be interested in hearing your take on them and what you use them for.

Here's my scenario/motive: I'm preparing to build an island composed of multiple cabs. I would like to check/adjust the gaps/reveals between the cab fronts and finished panels, door-level fillers, etc... I always take my cabs into the LDE and confirm all the details before adding them to a batch file for production.

Now, I haven't worked much w/assemblies, but I see how useful they could be and wanted to try them on this job. So I assembled this island and took it into the LDE, but it wasn't long before I realized that a couple of cabs needed some changes. So I went back to the cab editor, opened up one of the cabs, made and saved the changes to it (back to the library). But here's the rub: I then realized that cab (and the others I'd fixed) didn't get propogated to the island assy. I understand why this wouldn't/shouldn't be an automatic function, but.....for the love of wood....! there must be a way to force the assy to inherit/update its components from the library cabs without having to delete and re-add them to the assy? I just can't figure out how.

I look forward to reading your witty and experienced comments.
Daren

[Mark McCallum]

Hi Darren
We have been using assemblies quite a bit.
We like the ease of manipulation for cabinet alignment, wire framing to check details and adjusting in the CEditor. But with the recent program developments we are experimenting with doing more in custom layout.
If I understand correctly? I would go to the C editor make the changes to the assembly, re-save the assembly as Mrs Jones No2 or overwrite the old one.
Go back to batch cabinets or custom layout.
Delete the old assembly and select the new assembly and replace into the room.

I would definitely make an assembly of an island though, for custom layout, to the best of my knowledge it would be a lot quicker to place, but others often have other ways that work fine.

Just for example, imagine trying to place all the units in the island below, plus base, plus shadow line panels, plus benchtop with 100mm apron into the Custom layout piece by piece, (checking to see if all the part editor cutouts align on the various intersections of backs and ends) I think it would be many times harder.

At the moment though, as far as I am aware, a small downside is, if you place an assembly into custom room lay out, all the new dimensioning features do not apply to the individual cabinets within the assembly,

(I have suggested, somewhere else I think) that being able to ungroup an assembly once it is placed into a room and associated to a wall would be a extremely useful program feature. Then the new sizing / dimensionig features would then work on the un-grouped individual units.)

Another benefit of this is adjusting a single cabinet loads so much faster into the CE rather than taking in ten and loading all the data)
Thats my 2 cents worth, perhaps someone has a dollar to add
Mark

[tim lucas]

Howdy all, I'm interested in your two-cents worth.

I'm wondering if/how anyone out there uses assemblies? I'm sure there's some of you, and I'd be interested in hearing your take on them and what you use them for.

Here's my scenario/motive: I'm preparing to build an island composed of multiple cabs. I would like to check/adjust the gaps/reveals between the cab fronts and finished panels, door-level fillers, etc... I always take my cabs into the LDE and confirm all the details before adding them to a batch file for production.

Now, I haven't worked much w/assemblies, but I see how useful they could be and wanted to try them on this job. So I assembled this island and took it into the LDE, but it wasn't long before I realized that a couple of cabs needed some changes. So I went back to the cab editor, opened up one of the cabs, made and saved the changes to it (back to the library). But here's the rub: I then realized that cab (and the others I'd fixed) didn't get propogated to the island assy. I understand why this wouldn't/shouldn't be an automatic function, but.....for the love of wood....! there must be a way to force the assy to inherit/update its components from the library cabs without having to delete and re-add them to the assy? I just can't figure out how.

I look forward to reading your witty and experienced comments.
Daren

If you go to CE and load your assembly, make changes Then save your cabinets and assembly everythig will be updated - unless you dont want to update your cabinets because they are your standard use cabinets then just save the assembly.
And if you are in Custom Layout you can take the assembly to CE from there and when you return to the room you can apply changes just like when you edit 1 cabinet at a time.
Hope this helps
Tim

[Daren LaBranche]

Thank you Mark & Tim, I appreciate hearing your thoughts. After reading them I can see that, once again, there are many different ways to use eCabs, and that I could have explained mine a little better.

Mark: When I 1st started using eCabs I took a couple of pokes at CL (custom layout) and soon realized it wasn't for me. It felt awkward and it required me to have all of my cabs and parts prebuilt in the library before I was able to create a simple drawing to present to and work with my clients. I used SketchUp for a while, but then switched to CA (Chief Architect) and never looked back. I think I understand the downside to not using CL for pricing and materials, but as you'll see below I have other ways of doing that. I liked hearing how you work with assemblies though and could totally relate to it.

Tim: Your description was brilliantly simple, and highlighted to me that it was simply a matter of changing my thought process. I needed to be reminded that I can save individual cabs from within an assy or the entire assy itself.

So, while I can see that what I'm about to say has the potential to expand into a much larger topic, I'm going to explain my typical cabinet order process. I'd love to hear yours.

1) Initial meeting with client, scribbly notes, thoughts, materials and dimensions. Followup with a free, written, rough estimate (thumb in the air kinda thing). If we both feel 'the force', I ask for a retainer to proceed to the next step. The retainer is used to help cover my time spent on dwgs and preparing the estimate.

2) I provide them drawings (architectural style Plan, Elevations and Cross-sections with product and material schedules in CA) and a detailed written estimate. If they want to take these and go elsewhere I keep the entire retainer, if they give me the job I refund half the retainer in the project's final price.

3) Details are finalized, contract and dwgs are signed off, deposit is received and I start my production process.

4) I create all the cabs and parts in ecabs to match my CA dwgs.

5) I check all the details of each individual cab in the LDE and create a shop dwg for each. But, lately I've been getting more specific about my door/drawer front gaps/reveals and that means paying more attention to adjacent items. This is where I saw the benefits of assys. I can take it into the LDE and work with it there as a whole assy, or pull it apart into individual cabs.

6) Once all my products are ready for production I create a batch file with them.

6a) I create mtl order lists from it.

6b) If I'm using my CNC to cut some parts, I create a TWD file.

6c) If I'm manually cutting some parts, I create a manual cutlist. I typically do this for small/lineal parts like melamine dbx sides, but it's still quite time-consuming because I haven't found a good way to create a nesting dwg for the various widths. For example, my last job had 60 dbxs and because of the way I build my dbxs (stepped top edges, non-std heights), there were a lot of various heights and lengths of dbx fronts/backs/sides. I like rip full 8' lengths of mel at widths greater than 100mm (min. W my edgebander can handle), then edgeband, then cross-cut, and if req'd (for parts < 100 mm W), re-rip.

So, as you can see, I like to use ecabs as an engineering and planning tool, rather than a presentation or layout tool.

Daren

[tim lucas]

Thank you Mark & Tim, I appreciate hearing your thoughts. After reading them I can see that, once again, there are many different ways to use eCabs, and that I could have explained mine a little better.

Mark: When I 1st started using eCabs I took a couple of pokes at CL (custom layout) and soon realized it wasn't for me. It felt awkward and it required me to have all of my cabs and parts prebuilt in the library before I was able to create a simple drawing to present to and work with my clients. I used SketchUp for a while, but then switched to CA (Chief Architect) and never looked back. I think I understand the downside to not using CL for pricing and materials, but as you'll see below I have other ways of doing that. I liked hearing how you work with assemblies though and could totally relate to it.

Tim: Your description was brilliantly simple, and highlighted to me that it was simply a matter of changing my thought process. I needed to be reminded that I can save individual cabs from within an assy or the entire assy itself.

So, while I can see that what I'm about to say has the potential to expand into a much larger topic, I'm going to explain my typical cabinet order process. I'd love to hear yours.

1) Initial meeting with client, scribbly notes, thoughts, materials and dimensions. Followup with a free, written, rough estimate (thumb in the air kinda thing). If we both feel 'the force', I ask for a retainer to proceed to the next step. The retainer is used to help cover my time spent on dwgs and preparing the estimate.

2) I provide them drawings (architectural style Plan, Elevations and Cross-sections with product and material schedules in CA) and a detailed written estimate. If they want to take these and go elsewhere I keep the entire retainer, if they give me the job I refund half the retainer in the project's final price.

3) Details are finalized, contract and dwgs are signed off, deposit is received and I start my production process.

4) I create all the cabs and parts in ecabs to match my CA dwgs.

5) I check all the details of each individual cab in the LDE and create a shop dwg for each. But, lately I've been getting more specific about my door/drawer front gaps/reveals and that means paying more attention to adjacent items. This is where I saw the benefits of assys. I can take it into the LDE and work with it there as a whole assy, or pull it apart into individual cabs.

6) Once all my products are ready for production I create a batch file with them.

6a) I create mtl order lists from it.

6b) If I'm using my CNC to cut some parts, I create a TWD file.

6c) If I'm manually cutting some parts, I create a manual cutlist. I typically do this for small/lineal parts like melamine dbx sides, but it's still quite time-consuming because I haven't found a good way to create a nesting dwg for the various widths. For example, my last job had 60 dbxs and because of the way I build my dbxs (stepped top edges, non-std heights), there were a lot of various heights and lengths of dbx fronts/backs/sides. I like rip full 8' lengths of mel at widths greater than 100mm (min. W my edgebander can handle), then edgeband, then cross-cut, and if req'd (for parts < 100 mm W), re-rip.

So, as you can see, I like to use ecabs as an engineering and planning tool, rather than a presentation or layout tool.

Daren

Do you build your cabinets the same way each time or one time with dados next time with pocket screws???

ecabs seems so hard to everyone because it is so customizable.

If you create all your cabinets just the way you want them in ecabs already then to me your not using all ecabs has to give you to save time.
once you create them, take the assembly in to a room, create a cut list transfer it to excell ( you can sort your cut list ) - if you put your drawer boxes in the cabinets (dont matter how you build them you can build them in ecabs ) you can nest them to

My steps are a little differant

1 meet with customer,scetch, notes like you
2 create room in ecabs with standard cabinets to create 3d renderings for customer and post on my website
3 adj cabinets according to customer
4 Written proposal
5 receive deposit then fine tune cabinets order material and such
6 print cut list and create TWD file

Tim