Door/Drawer Editor Feedback

[BenRatt]

[quote="Neville Bastian"]Hi Ben,
We are very disappointed with the Door Drawer program in Ecabinets. We have experimented with laying three patterns over the top of each other to get the door design we require. This involves halting the program before it does its final cut in nesting so is pretty stressful. The good thing is that it seems to nest the same way each time.
Really I think it needs 3 outside router paths and unlimited inside paths.
The internal corners can not be squared unless you use the painfully slow modeller and have a half a day or more to do a kitchen set of doors.[color=#FF0000][b]We do use the profile modeler for small jobs where we want the square corner door. It does a nice job but at the price of about 15 mins a door[/b].[/color]
The other door it cannot do is the design copy of the framed door with match lining panelling. Not sure what you guys call it in the states but it is a frame with a 8 mm pocket then a V groove approx 75 to 100mm apart in that pocket. The number of grooves increase or decrease according to the width of the door.
The other issue is cutting the drawer fronts. Is the pattern on the drawer fronts the same as the door? [color=#FF0000]We typically will do a raised panel drawer front, I just make the top and bottom rails narrower.[/color]Is the drawer made like a solid timber drawer set where you have rails at each drawer section. These are then cut into two, three or four? The drawer could also be like a door that is cut into the number of fronts required. Then is there a flip operation for drilling the metal sided drawer front bracket?[color=#FF0000][b]I don't believe you can do flip ops (or part edits) on the backside of MDF doors/drawers. You can only do that on slab doors/drawers. I would love to be able to do that though. I ended up buying a separate Blum machine that is set up only for drawer front boring. This reduces the chance for error dramatically from using a hand jig. If we could drill for Blum fixing brackets on the CNC I would love that because that would completely negate the chance for error on the assembly mans part[/b].[/color]
There is a lot to it so maybe the reason its been put on the to do list one day.
Todd Miller is saying it is going to happen, so that is encouraging. Hopefully they will ask a few Ecabinet users who do a lot of their kitchens with mdf doors to stand up and be willing to be part of a think tank and beta program.
Keep up the pressure you MDF door guys. Not everyone uses timber doors in the world market. [color=#FF0000][b]I think if Thermwood could develop the door editor a little more it would be a great "selling point". Panelmetrix is around $8-10,000 and if you could do at least a few of the most common patterns efficiently it would be a great improvement. Right now we can do the most basic single pass route with an exterior profile, or a two pass interior route with no exterior profile. Combine some improvements with the ability to batch doors (using the trick I've attached from Scott Vaal), and you have a very efficient system to outsource doors for other shops.[/b][/color]
Regards

Neville[/quote]