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Woodworking News features Cabinet Vision

Woodworking News September 2009 Company Profile pages 14 and 15

Cabinet Vision moves further ahead

Cabinet Vision is an award winning design and manufacturing software
developed by Planit Software Ltd. It enables the manufacture of all
bespoke kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms and any custom casework
furniture designs, with the same ease and reliability as standard pieces.
The need to combine standard and bespoke elements in any design
and manufacturing process is essential to businesses, especially in
these demanding times. Cabinet Vision provides businesses with a
reliable and full screen to machine solution.

Starting with the design environment, Cabinet Vision allows companies to efficiently design kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms allowing standard library items to be used and optionally edited to meet the specific demands of the customer. CV 5's new menu structure makes the design process simple for people unfamiliar with CAD systems and has the functionality to meet even the most advanced and demanding designers requirements.

Not only can a design be made on your premises, Cabinet Vision offer Jobsite Companion, specifically designed for use on a PDA, that can be taken to a customer’s residence and used to survey and annotate key room features such as window, gas, electric, water and waste locations. Jobsite Companion then synchronises this information with the main Cabinet Vision design system.

The area that Raf Lobato, UK Regional Director, is keen to highlight in the design process is the ease of customisation of any job. As he explains “A lot of design products work from a predefined library of components, which can be difficult to customise and quickly become outdated in this fast moving industry. Cabinet Vision does not restrict the user to standard library pieces, in just a couple of minutes even a novice user can combine standard units with a modified or fully custom unit”.

Mr Lobato’s view is supported by Cabinet Vision customer Ian Larner from Paneltec Ltd who create furniture for the dental industry among others. ”Normal cabinets are not used in the dental sector as they have to be special heights and there is special equipment that has to be housed in each cabinet. We also find that each dentist will want the design tweaked to suit their needs. Before using Cabinet Vision these tweaks would cause a huge problem because you have to change the program for each individual cabinet component which takes time and also opens up the chance of errors occurring, Within Cabinet Vision you can store cabinet designs by type, so kitchen cabinets and dental cabinets can be held in different databases and pulled into the planned layout. Any changes to the standard cabinet structure can be quickly input parametrically and in the background the software is automatically writing the CNC programs for each component part. It’s simple to modify a design and you can be confident that it will run through the workshop and be 100 per cent correct. This is a key feature - how simple it is to modify a cabinet, changing not just the view of it but also the program to produce it”.

As Ian states, any standard, modified or custom unit can be saved for future use, thus allowing the user to build his own catalogue of common components.

Cabinet Vision provides photo realistic rendering capabilities and enables companies to provide these materials to their customers as part of the sales presentation. To improve the design and customer experience in the latest version, Cabinet Vision V5 continues to embrace the latest technology and allows Google Sketchup 3D CAD parts to be incorporated with the Cabinet Vision design. This again enhances the realistic image of the design as well as providing accurate dimensional information of the latest models of utility equipment such as cookers and fridges.

Even customer’s own blenders and toasters can be added to the work surface”, smiles Mr Lobato. “We are committed to the continued development of Cabinet Vision and work hard to ensure it delivers the latest advancements including high quality renderings, these advancements are provided to Cabinet Vision users as part of their support plan.”

Customised quotations are instantly created directly from the design, these can be easily adjusted to suit the requirements of the business, from adjusting profit margins on individual jobs or components through to tailoring the design and layout of the quotation itself. The costing functionality enables the user to fully analyse the breakdown of the cost in the job by material, labour, components etc. The integration of this functionality within the software ensures accurate costing.

If the customer should require alteration to the design, this is easily handled by Cabinet Vision. All relevant design, costing and manufacturing documentation is updated immediately. This ensures the reliable screen to machine philosophy developed by Planit Software, which was particularly important to Starplan, a large user of Cabinet Vision, as Ian McCreery, production director explains “We investigated the software we would need to support our operation and Cabinet Vision proved to be the best choice. We didn’t want a glossy standalone CAD system, we wanted a package that could produce the rendered version of the bedroom, but also run data through to the shop floor to drive the machinery. You can produce 10 to 20 fitted bedrooms per week with just about any system. However, we are trying to get the level of producing 250 fitted bedrooms per week, which is why we have 70 seats of Cabinet Vision.”

With agreement on the design we now need to get the components and assemblies manufactured and this is where Cabinet Vision believes it drives the real value to businesses. Literally at the touch of a button the relevant manufacturing documentation is produced removing hours of labour intensive and arduous tasks.

“The beauty of the solution is that the correct manufacturing data is produced at the push of a button, previously this task could have taken many hours and been unreliable causing waste and scrap on the shop floor” Mr Lobato comments. The manufacturing documentation and reports are extensive and includes items such as Bill of Materials (BoM), cut lists, assembly instructions and costing information. With this information businesses can send the design directly to the shop floor for manufacture.

The vast majority of Cabinet Vision customers use the cutting list information with non-CNC machinery. However, as with the manufacturing documentation, directly from the design the software is instantly able to produce the relevant G-Code for any CNC machine tool available. This gives companies complete peace of mind that they can progress supported by the modular structure of Cabinet Vision. Customers can be confident that they can use traditional manufacturing techniques alongside the latest machine tool technologies, whether it be cell based (Saw, P2P) or NBM (Nested based manufacturing).

As we have previously discussed Cabinet Vision accurately outputs the manufacturing knowledge needed to make the design reliably. It has the complete design built into the system and can maximise the material utilisation by optimising the panels needed to manufacture the complete the design. The efficient optimisation of all the panels in the design is relevant to both non-CNC and CNC machine tools, providing maximised sheet utilisation and removing the waste of costly materials.

The use of Cabinet Vision optimises the design to manufacture process helping businesses to remain competitive as Ian Larner highlights “We have had a sketch in the morning and shipped the complete surgery in the same afternoon, this would have not been possible without Cabinet Vision.”

At the shop floor Cabinet Vision creates labels and through shop floor data capture can monitor your designs through the manufacturing process, ensuring at point of assembly you have the right components for the job. Cabinet Vision can create the relevant documentation for each design or on a cabinet by cabinet basis thus ensuring that non standard units are put together correctly with the same ease as the standard components.

Mr Lobato summarises “Cabinet Vision is designed to suit the way individual businesses design and manufacture in the wood working industry. It streamlines standard designs and makes bespoke designs as easy to process, then when you’re happy you can send it off to manufacture 100% confident of what will be produced.”

Cabinet Vision will be holding seminars across the country showing the full capabilities of the software and helping businesses to understand how they can increase productivity, reduce costs and save time. To find your nearest event visit www.cabinetvision.com/ ukseminars

Planit Software understands that they need to be the provider of a complete solution and that the support their customers receive can often be as critical as the software itself. Cabinet Vision has a dedicated team of experienced and knowledgeable engineers based across the country providing comprehensive support and training to its customers.

Tel 01225 721330 www.cabinetvision.com/ukseminars.

Woodworking News September 2009 Company Profile pages 14 and 15