I just need a little help to get me started, designing Cabinets

Dose anyone have any examples of Cabinets in Solidworks that can be
easily adjusted with parameters, similar to the cabinet editor in
Cabinet Vision:
Where you can input a set of parameters and the cabinet gets
constructed automatically; such as, Cabinet width, height, depth,
drawers, faces, doors, etc.
I understand that I will need envelopes, configurations, equations,
tables, Assembly Layout Sketch, etc.
I just need a little help to get me started, dose anyone know of any
interesting Add-Ins or Macros that might help.

Thanks for your help
Ian,

 

Actually you need something called a configurator. Ask your VAR. I
can't remember the one my VAR has. Also there have been some presented
here. Search on Zward or Zwaard if memory serves.

 

use the search string in Google: configurator and solidworks

 

E-mail of Jan-Jurjen Zwaard: info at studiozwaard dot nl
He did make some kind of configurator

 

Why not try "Driveworks"? It was intended for exactly what you're talking
about.

Richard

 

Hi,

My experience in designing cabinets (19", electrical...) this way has
let
to disaster for two reasons (I did not use the above mentioned
"configurator",
I do not know what it is...):

- My own limited understanding of the idiocyncracies of the SW software
and its internal workings.
- Stability issues with Solidworks, especially when modifying
parameters.

I did ultimately manage to finish the "job" but that required quiet an
effort
to get through.

In brief, I did the whole cabinet in a SW "part" (by using "merge"
selectively - I gather that this is a recommened practice) and used
"split" to generate the individual parts and did minor detailing, etc.
Then the assembly was created to check for mistakes... All dimensions
is controlled by parametric stuff in the original part.

Hope this helps.

Vinodh Kumar M.
www.swCP3.com

 

And it seemed to work pretty good.

 

There can be a bit of a problem trying to make a really smart assembly
driven set of parts and that comes from the inability of SW to keep
track of edges, faces and vertices when things change. It didn't used
to be as bad as it is now, but it can lead to real problems with
robustness. Faces can be named which can help, but edges and vertices
cannot be named. And digging out a face name or even knowing which
faces are named can be a lot of work.

For this reason a configurator makes a lot of sense because it
transcends most of these problems.

 

A couple of years ago I helped a furniture company create a set of
templates for panels, doors, windows, drawers and cabinets to replace
the Cabinet Vision product. I didn't create the interface, but did all
of the models behind the scenes.

As I remember, this was all done with multibodies saved out to
individual parts and brought back together as an assembly. It's true,
the reseller did try to sell them RuleStream and possibly DriveWorks,
but could just as easily be done with a little VBA and Excel.

It's definitely doable.

Matt