Slanting Boards in Cabinet Design Software
One of the big breakthroughs in Version 3 is the much improved board slanting function. In V3 we have moved the slanting ability directly into the assembly design window and process. It is now more ‘what you see is what you get’ in nature. Move a board and the movement is instantly shown in the image area of the design form. There are a few other nice things about this new user interface. First of all you can specify the degree of slant the board is to be set. Want a 45 degree slant – just enter 45 in the degree text box. Oh another thing — if you don’t want to enter an exact number you can just use the scroll wheel on your mouse to move the board up and down, back and forth, or side to side. And there are two modes of moving. One keeps the length of the board as you swing the board in space (Arc Slanting). The other adjusts the board length to make a board fit in between two points. This trim edge method allows you to select the way you want to trim the ends of the board so they will meet flush with the butting board. 
If you want to see how I used a combination of the new slanting capability and the SketchList 3D cabinet design software clone and space feature, just watch this video. CLICK HERE TO WATCH VIDEO
I have to say the louvered doors came as a request from a user. With the old slant feature is was very difficult to accomplish the desired design. That use – kindly said – ‘well it took a long time’. And it did – not to mention not having a really good outcome 🙂 The set of louvered doors I made in this video took just several minutes. And the outcome is really nice. The new doors are in the image shown with this post. We are moving on in V3i development. Merging of assemblies is being completed at this point. Very soon we will turn our attention to increasing performance so things load faster, changes are reflected quicker, and you can get more work done in less time. Please comment on this posting – it helps to get the feedback. Thanks, Dave
David Rozewski
My woodworking love started in 6th grade in school shop class. I have a BS in Industrial Technology and an MBA. At my first job, I computerized a production accounting system – the results were positive, and I loved the challenges. I left the corporate world to begin woodworking full time and one of my first decisions was to use CAD for my designs. I found that CAD did not meet all my needs. I wrote a specification of what I wanted and turned it into a prototype. SketchList 3D incorporated in 2007. We completed programming and launched. Today thousands of woodworkers use SketchList 3D.
