Kitchen cabinet design tool from SketchList

SketchList 3D kitchen design software quick introduction.

Projects form the highest level of your design.  Project size is determined by height, width, and depth.  These dimensions can be either imperial or metric. You identify projects by project name.

Projects contain and organize assemblies, locating and sizing them as needed for the design.

Projects only contain assemblies.   To work on an assembly, you must be at the project level.  At the project level, you can do the following to assemblies.

Assemblies contain everything of a project.  These include:

You identify assemblies by name.  An assembly’s dimensions of height, width, and depth define its size.

Insert an assembly into a project in one of three ways.

1. Insert a new and empty assembly.  And then after creating an assembly continue by inserting components.  These include doors, drawers, hardware. And/or boards.
2. Insert an assembly from your Library if you saved any there. Remember you might modify that assembly once inserted, or use it as inserted from the library.
3. Create a new assembly with the Cabinet Wizard if you purchased that addon. With the Cabinet Wizard you can either a. use the assembly as transferred to Sketchlist 3D from the Wizard.  Or you might further modify that design to fit your needs.

A door or drawer is a container or organizer that manages the parts that make up the door or drawer.  Doors and drawers have names and dimensions: height, width, and depth.  A newly created door or drawer is empty and needs boards and or hardware.

Insert doors and or drawers into an assembly in one of three ways.

1. Insert a new and empty door or drawer. Design the door or drawer by inserting boards or hardware.
2. Insert an assembly from your Library if you saved doors or drawers there. You might modify them once inserted, or use it as inserted from the library.
3. Create a new door or drawer with the Cabinet Wizard if you have those models. With the Cabinet Wizard you can either a. use the door or drawer or door as transferred to Sketchlist 3D from the Wizard.  Or you might further modify that design to fit your needs.

Locate the door or drawer in the assembly.  More on locating later.

Insert hardware into an assembly or a door/drawer in one of three ways.

1. Insert new and empty hardware. Design the hardware by inserting “boards”.
2. Insert hardware from your Library if you have any saved there. You might modify that hardware once inserted into the assembly.

Locate the hardware as necessary.

Insert a board into an assembly, door/drawer or hardware in one of two ways.

Unlike the assembly, door, drawer, or hardware, a board is not created as an empty container.  It is a three-dimensional object with either a color or grain appearance.  Boards contain two surfaces and four edges when created.  Shaping a board can change the number of edges.  For example, a triangle has three edges, an octagon eight.

Its name, type, material, and sizes define the board.  Defaults are used for new boards.  You can change the defaults by selecting the board and clicking the board definition tab on the right of SketchList 3D main screen.

Place a board in a container in one of two ways.

1. Insert a new board. Select one of the three board type icons.  If there is more than one assembly, drag the icon into the assembly to receive the board. The board type establishes which dimension is the board thickness.  SketchList 3D users this for the cut list and optimizer.
   1. Flat – surfaces face front to back.
   2. Vertical – surfaces face left to right.
   3. Horizontal – surfaces face bottom to top.
2. Insert a board from your Library if you saved one there.

Locate the board as necessary.

Recap of structure.

SketchList 3D designs consist of projects, assemblies, door & drawers, hardware, and boards.  That is the structure.

• To work on an object in a level [e.g. door level] SketchList must be set at the level above. In our example to work on a door, you must be at the assembly level.
• To work in a level [e.g. Door] you must be at that level. For example, if you want to edit boards in a door you must be at the door level.

Three repetitive steps accomplish 95% of all work in the SketchList 3D kitchen cabinet design tool. 

They are:

1. For example, insert a board into an assembly.
2. Change the size of that board.
3. Place the board in the proper location in the assembly.

Inserting happens primarily by clicking icons near the top of the screen.  A type of insertion includes cloning – making an exact copy of some object already in the design.

Three tools resize objects in the SketchList 3D kitchen cabinet design tool.

1. Form
2. Spreadsheet
3. Red dots.

Triplets.  Understanding triplets help you with resizing.  Three values work together to set the size and location of an object.  Changing one or two values changes the third.  There is a set of triplets for the width, depth, and height of an object.

The top row contains buttons.  The bottom row contains values.  Changing the value of left from 10 to 20 and click the button Right changes its value from 25 to 35.  Changing the value of bottom to 10 and top to 30 then clicking the button Height changes height to 20.

The form tool presents the triplets of one object at a time.

Text boxes contain the values and the buttons are to the right of the text box.

The spreadsheet tool shows the triplets for all objects at once.

The cells contain the values which you can change. The column headings act as buttons.  Change the left value of an object and click the width column heading and it will change as required.

The red dots also change sizes, either by dragging or entering a new value.

• Dragging When you drag a red dot of an assembly, drawers, door or hardware the pink plane appears to show where the stretch or shrink will happen. Anything the pink plane cuts is changed.  All to the right of the pink plane is moved.  All to the left of the pink plan stays as before the resize. Dragging a board’s red dot does not show the pink plane.  Dragging a board’s red dot while holding down the shift key will snap that board to the next board found.
• Entering value. Right-click the red dot to open the form. Enter the new value.  The pink plane appears to show where the stretch or shrink will happen.  Anything the pink plane cuts is changed.  All to the right of the pink plane is moved.  All to the left of the pink plan stays as before the resize.

Used slightly differently, the form and spreadsheet tools are used for sizing locate objects.

To change the left value of the object you can either:

Enter the new left values – say 20 – and click right.   The right value changes to 35 and the object moves to the right by 10 units.

Enter the new value for right – say to 5 – and click Left.  The new value of the left is 0.

The same logic applies to both the form and spreadsheet.

The blue dots locate objects.

Right-click the blue dot and the form opens.  Enter new values to move the object.  To save time you can copy the blue dot values, open a form for another blue dot and copy the values to that point.  The two objects will butt together at that point.

The Align tool locates objects in relation to each other.

• Left – center – right
• Front – center -back
• Bottom – center – top

Select the object to which to align, hold down the shift key and select any number of objects, then click the Align tab and pick the icon that represents the type of alignment you desire.

Two other methods to locate are the clone and space and the clone and mirror functions.

• The clone and mirror works vertically. It makes a mirror copy of the original object.
• Clone and space make any number of copies and spaces them equally across some distance or spaces them a fixed distance from each other. Clone and space work in any direction.

Important rule

Everything must fit into the container that holds it.  You cannot put a 20-inch board in a 10-inch assembly.  Even for a micro-second.  If necessary you should re-size the container.

Summary

The structure of a Sketchlist 3D design contains:

1. Projects
2. Assemblies
3. Doors
4. Drawers
5. Hardware
6. Boards

The three actions in SketchList 3D design are:

1. Insert
2. Size
3. Locate

The primary tools in SketchList 3D cabinet design tool are:

1. Form
2. Spreadsheet
3. Dots

If you are new to SketchList 3D make sure you see this.

This may help in a more general way.