Details and Replication – Kitchen Design Software

Continuing my cabinets with SketchList 3D kitchen design software

In my previous post I showed how SketchList 3D kitchen design software works with individual boards rather than lines and arcs like most CAD programs. After 25 years in the business that is how I tend to think.  I find it comfortable to work that way on the computer too.  Still the REAL advantage to designing board by board is the ability to detail and replicate boards as you need them. Let me show you what I mean.

Keeping in mind the steps in the shop, I want to cut the toe kick notch in the cabinet side.

Four steps get you there.

1. Click on the board called “cabinet side” that we created,
2. on the right of the screen, select “Details”.
3. with the surface of the board highlighted,
4. click the “Shape” button.

This allows for changing the board shape from rectangle to whatever needed. A new window appears when you select “Shape”.

It  shows your board on top of a grid pattern.  If there are other boards near the one beings shaped, they will appear to provide a reference for locating in the assembly.

Now out in your shop, you’d grab a tape and mark out lines at 4 inches up and 3 inches back as your cut lines. You can do the same here.

The “Insert Point” button allows you to ‘mark’ points on the board.  It is like marking with your pencil. I click to insert two points on the board’s edges to “draw lines”  between these points.  A line segment is created by those points.

At the left bottom, you can tell the computer to snap to the grid, and choose the grid spacing so the points can be placed very precisely.

Now you have three points, the original corner point and your two “reference marks”.

The “Select” button allows for grabbing the corner point and dragging it into the board to move the corner to the inside of the notch.  This changes its values from zero front and zero bottom to three front and four bottom.  And the toe kick notch appears.

Notice too that at the very bottom left, there is a box for the “Point Properties”. This displays the location values of the point selected.  It also allows you to type in the measurements and  instead of dragging and dropping the point.

Both work well, SketchList 3D lets you work your way.

Selecting the surface of the board at the board detail level allows you to

• shape the board,
• add rabbets and dadoes using “Non-rounded Holes”
• and line bore hardware holes using the “Holes” button.

The buttons on the right of the screen are for these functions.

Either “Holes” or “Non-rounded Holes” will open a dialog box for adding the location and dimensions of your details. But as you can see below, it is not just a place to add numbers. SketchList 3D shows you the board and changes the layout lines with each entry, showing you in real time what you are doing. Typing in the wrong number will show up right away.

Adding in these details is done individually, but you do not need to individually enter every one of a series of holes. The “Edit/Clone Holes” button on the right allows you to choose a hole and and it, changing size or location.

Edit holes also allows for cloning the hole, creating rows of evenly spaced numbers or spaced by a specific dimension. Just right click on the hole you want to modify and select what you want to do.

Look closely and you will see that I added

• shallow dadoes for the deck and stretchers,
• another to accept the back of the cabinet
• and holes for shelves and drawer slides.

So my Left side board is complete, but now I need to do all this for the opposite side right?

Nope! Just as your shop drawings would show one side in detail and simply assume a mirrored right side, SketchList 3D will copy (called “cloning”) and mirror the second side. Select the left side by clicking on it, and then “Clone and Mirror” from the right hand column. The new side is assumed to be placed on the opposite end of the work space which is why I set this work space to the 27″ width of my cabinet.

Any part created you design can be detailed and replicated using the tools I walked through here.

The three stretchers are identical, just screwed into different locations. In SketchList 3D kitchen design software, we can create one and “clone” it into the locations instead of creating three. Next time out, we will look at adding in the deck and stretchers.

I hope you will continue to follow along as I explore and explain this software package, and I invite your comments!