Jon-Mullwoods

I can confirm that the way you have this drawn is the way we would typically build this style of cabinet. The only difference is that we miterlock our finished ends instead of butt joining them, but that's not really an important point for what you're asking. As far as how to best do that in Chief, I will defer to the advice of @MarkMc and @DBCooperas I am very new to this program.

@MarkMc Wow! I think I'm following the idea of what you're creating and generally how to do it, but some of the details I'm not totally familiar with how they function. I've only created a few door symbols as actual doors, so I don't yet understand much about how to use them in unconventional ways. I'll need to take some time to dig into this some and work through the details. Thanks for the idea and taking the time to workshop it.

Thanks @MarkMc. Some of that does sound foreign to me and I'd like to learn more. I'll reach out to you.

Thanks @GeneDavisfor taking the time to create that so I can open it up and understand it and for your ideas. And thanks @MarkMc and @DBCooperfor your advice. This gives me some ideas of things I need to take time to learn and what direction to go. I think I will send a suggestion to Chief as well so that things like this could be easier.

A lot of our "off-the-street" customers wouldn't care much about the dimensions, but a few do. We work for a lot of contractors and designers who care more though. However, it's more important for our internal use between our design/sales, drafting, pricing, and on site measure departments. I do think we can get all the info from what Chief provides, but it's not quite as efficient and clear as what we've been used to, so I was hoping to clean them up a bit. We do a lot of custom work and gang-built cabinetry, so opening sizes often are what we use more than overall cabinet sizes. I understand we'll have to get used to some different things if we keep using Chief, but I was just seeing if there was anything out there I haven't discovered yet that could create what we'd ideally like to see.

Thanks Gene. That sounds like a method that would work pretty well and was kind of what I was assuming we were going to end up having to do. I've had a little practice creating symbols, but still pretty new. I'll have to do some more research/training to learn how to create them so they stretch in all the ways we would want.

"A lot" is about one job a week and maybe less. When we do a job with them, there are usually multiple throughout.

Thanks for that idea. I didn't see that option and it's helpful to know. Like Gene said though, it doesn't seem like it's really going to accomplish all that we're looking for. We need it to sometimes be used for the bottom rail in the cabinet, and other times in the baseboard around the cabinet with various different profile options, and other times as a valence. Also, some of the cutouts aren't just ends with a straight center section, but there is a curve that goes from "foot to foot" so to speak.

Yeah, here is a picture of our most common use for these cutouts. The cabinets are wrapped with baseboard and the front piece has a shaped cutout that is open back to the toekick.

We do a lot of shaped cutouts in baseboard or the rail of a cabinet. I'm trying to figure out the best way to create a symbol that can be used for our typical shapes. Maybe the best practice is to create a type of valence object that can be used. I'm new to Chief, so I'm not sure the ideal way to create that, but have some ideas. However, I would actually rather find a way to create an object that is a hole that can be placed in other objects. Does anyone have any ideas how that could be accomplished? The pic shows examples of the types of cutout shapes we would do.

I work for a cabinet manufacturer and we just recently started using Chief Architect to create better drawings for our customers. Up until now we've used different software that we can manufacture from but doesn't necessarily provide what we want to give our customers during the design phase of a project. We get good elevations and plan views from the manufacturing software, but they lack in speed and ease of use for 3D renderings and to get a quicker turnaround for quotes. That being said, I'm struggling to get the dimensioning of Chief Architect to be close to what we are used to. I understand we'll have to make some concessions and I have some ideas of different ways we may do things, but just wondering if anyone has any good dimensioning practices/set-ups that you've developed specifically for kitchens and baths, or if anyone knows how to accomplish any of the following "wish list" items with automatic dimensioning? On elevation views: 1. Change the reach of the left/right vertical dimensions to only reflect the cabinets closest to them and not every different cabinet in the view. 2. Show the cabinet opening widths even if they are behind full overlay doors. On plan views: 3. Show the base cabinet widths on one string and the upper cabinet widths on a separate string. 4. Show the overall cabinet run, especially on walls where the cabinets don't fill the wall. Attached pics show examples on some simple jobs of what we get from 2 different programs we've used and also what we're currently getting from Chief.