Calculating Kitchen Lumber

[John Kananis]

I'm assuming the consensus for a small shop would be to use sketchup? Or is there something better/easier/etc?

[Jeff Roltgen]

John,
I've been in Sketchup for 15 years now. My nephew says Fusion 360 has advantages over it, but, at this point, I'm so bonded to Sketchup, I'll likely stick to it.
From a fresh perspective like yours, I'd take a very close look at Fusion360, based on some advantages he felt would make drafting easier than in Sketchup.

From design to CAM to cut list, with a few plugins between, it's basically:
Sketchup, Aspire and Cutlist Plus.
Export dxf's to Aspire (or V-carve pro) for CAM processing to produce part files on the CNC (plys and hardwood pieces with arcs /3D carving work)
Export Cutlist report, using Cutlist bridge, (c/o Joe Zeh swamp road woodworks) for use in Cutlist Plus.

If you're diligent regarding labeling components as you draft in Sketchup, you simply select your parts on the screen and run a report that will automatically generate a Cut List file. Open it in Cutlist Plus, and it will then calculate how much rough lumber and quantity/types of sheet goods needed to buy to produce a given project. You fill in costs, markups, and have a very quick answer. And yes, an exacting user like yourself can specify what percentage of waste you'd like it to allow for your rough lumber!.
I love printing labels for organizing the sheet goods. Recently went to a nice Trodat 5558 self-inking stamp for labeling rough lumber. Keeps you focused on quality, not overwhelmed with stacks of parts.

If you'd like a more automated, refined way of doing this, Joe Zeh's full plugin version, called Cab Writer, utilizes all 3 of the above, which AFAIK is still a single, modest purchase price - like still under a grand?.
Mozaik essentially does the same thing, just more of a subscription version, and they incorporate V-Ray or similar for rendering almost photo-realistic images of a given project, be it a piece of furniture or a complete kitchen full of cabinets.

Large - scale production software is profoundly powerful, with a profoundly shocking annual cost, last time I checked.

jeff

[John Kananis]

Great info, Jeff. Appreciated.

[andrew whicker]

I use Fusion 360 for general 3D modeling / drawing (instead of Sketchup).

As said above, they are both cheap. Both are probably equally frustrating and/or developed, etc. Fusion is an Autodesk (Autocad) product which is the reason I went with it. However, after using it for a few years now, I can't say it's impressed me as much as I thought it would. The development team is small and has overlooked some very basic capabilities (creating decent dimensioned and annotated 2D drawings) while spending tons of resources in other areas (feeding your model directly into 3D printers and CNC equipment). It seems to be geared towards the company / person with in-house CNC equipment who does both the designing and machining (less common, in my opinion) and not so much geared towards the company / person that uses vendors for some parts or doesn't use in-house CNC equipment (more common). For me, the latter, it can be a frustrating product.


I don't remember Sketchup being super impressive either. I'm sure both will make you pull your hair out at different times. As with most things in life, the good products cost good money (Solidworks, Catia, etc).


There is a nesting add on for Fusion that is a part of a bigger add on for sheet metal fabrication. It's a very expensive add on though, not very small shop oriented.

[John Kananis]

More good info. My floor space will not accommodate a cnc setup any time soon so I'm leaning towards sketchup at this point (seems a little more novice-friendly?).

[andrew whicker]

They both have a ton of YouTube professionals, forums, etc. I wouldn't worry about choosing the right one based on use-ability. Whichever you choose, you'll learn it and get used to it.

I haven't used Sketchup in many a year, but from memory it "thinks" differently than Fusion. I think Fusion is more typical of higher end professional modeling software.. you'll have to research. So if you were to use a cheap product (Fusion or Sketchup) for X years and then transfer to a more expensive product, you should pick whichever one is most like the professional products so you aren't re-learning everything all over again.

If you don't see that in your future, then I guess just research to see which one has the most support, resources, and development teams behind it. I'm guessing it's a wash, but at this point I'm not going to change so I'm not going to research the topic... although I do wonder. Also, if you do use vendors / like having 2D drawings in your shop, see what people say about Sketchup vs Fusion. I'm not kidding, Fusion really sucks in this department. You can get by, but it's very meh for a company who owns Autocad. You'd think the development team never worked in real world manufacturing before.

[Paul F Franklin]

If you are thinking about sketchup (which I have used since it came out), consider signing up for the upcoming fine woodworking sketchup training class (if it's still open). It's focused on woodworking applications of sketchup and the instructor is really sharp. It's not free, but if you want a jumpstart, it is likely to provide it. Even though I've used it for many years, I'm taking the class because of the instructors expertise.

[John Kananis]

I'll look for it and check it out. I stopped subscribing to fww a few years back. I still love looking through the issues from past decades but the newer stuff seems mostly full of adds and stuff that's been repeated to death.

[Dan Rude]

I haven't spent too much time learning Sketch-up yet. I hope to get back to it this summer, but work has not been slow yet. I purchased Bob Lang's course on it, he goes through everything with examples in an interactive interface. I also have a couple of his books and one on Kitchen Design. Another Author Paul Levine on "Cabinets and Built in's". https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/cabine...330/#TBContent. Good luck! Dan

[John Kananis]

Oh, good link. Thank you.