Building a Board

After starting a project, you will see a chart with the Assembly Calculator. Assemblies are explained in the assembly article. We’re not going to get into it quite yet. 

From the top, enter Height of 30, then click green Top. 

Enter Width of 30, then click green Right.

Enter Depth of 30, then click green Back. 

1) To create a board, click on Boards in the left side menu. 

You’ll see two fields that may cause confusion at first: Thickness of Board and Grain Direction.

• Thickness of Board tells SketchList which dimension represents the board’s actual material thickness—essentially, which way the board lies flat. The other two dimensions are the board’s standard Height × Width.
• Grain Direction is used later when generating a cut list so SketchList can determine how the material should be laid out and cut.

For this example, we’re making a side board for a cabinet.

In this case, the Board Thickness = Width, so enter the thickness of material under Width (probably ¾ if you’re using standard Beech).

Then, just enter the board’s Height and Depth as its main dimensions, and you’ve created your first board!

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PS: “Locate Your Board” sets the board’s bottom-left corner within the assembly. It’s optional—many users find it faster to position and resize the board once it appears, using the tools on screen:

• the spreadsheet-style panel (will make more sense after learning about Assemblies)
• draggable dots, (shift click blue to snap to other objects, shift click red to resize)
• or right-clicking dots: right click the dot you want to connect to, copy values, and paste to the dot you want to be connected

Experiment with the different methods to explore the different options.