What Would Be The Best Way To Go About...


OldCKD
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...creating from scratch or modifying an existing wall cabinet to have no back?  I am designing a project where I would like to place wall cabinets in front of windows so the light will shine all the way through from behind (the cabinets would have glass doors on the front, of course).   What I simply need is a backless cabinet, remainder of cabinet to have standard attributes.

 

Any ideas on how to go about doing that?  I need it to show correctly in a raytrace and can't figure out a quick and easy workaround!

 

TIA

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About the only way I know to do this is a Custom Symbol.

 

If you display a cabinet in 3D without a Door you can then use "Delete Surface" to remove the front and back faces of the back of the cabinet.

Convert that to an Interior Furniture Symbol.

Place the Symbol in your Plan and add Glass Cabinet Doors manually.

 

It is possible to take this one step further and Block the new Symbol and the Cabinet Door and then make that be recognized as a Cabinet so it will appear in the Schedule.

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Actually, your second idea, when I fooled around with it, was even easier.  I used the peninsula wall cabinet, changed to glass doors, in the sides/back section of the DBX I checked "match front" and voila! Glass on front and back, looks just how I want it to in raytrace.  Workaround extraordinaire.

 

Thank you SO much :)

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I would really like an option to make a backless cabinet.  I frequently want the wall texture to show behind a cabinet, and I just don't feel right about burying the back of the cabinet a couple of inches into the wall to achieve that look.  :-)

 

It doesn't seem like adding a checkbox for "Backless Cabinet" would be that hard, programming-wise, does it?

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Kathleen - Seems in real life that that kind of cabinet would lack in structure. Have you ever had them made by a cabinet company? My only thought is to place one the size and style you want in a blank plan, use delete surface tools and then convert to symbol.

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Would this do the job?

 

This has all of the functions and properties of a wall cabinet. Just change front doors as usual.

 

This was done by making the cabinet box material 100% transparency. Added left & right side panels 1/16" to make sides solid. Used molding applied top and bottom to make tops & bottom.

 

Graham

Open Back Wall Cabinet.calibz

post-4793-0-67989100-1431545898_thumb.jpg

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I was able to accomplish almost everything I needed using the X7 "split horizontally" and "split vertically" functions.  I still had to embed the cabinet into the back wall a bit to be able to get the tongue and groove paneling, though.  Used a custom countertop for the bench seat.

post-513-0-98924700-1431548807_thumb.jpg

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Kathleen - Just curious, why do you need to build it as one piece? You can just build it with individual cabinets and components and when finished convert it into an architectural block. Wont it be made in components and then fit together on site. If not it looks like it would be to large to get through a door.

 

Graham

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It's easier to move around and resize in the plan if it's all one piece.  

 

I thought that might be the reason. If you build this as individual cabinets & components and then convert to an architectural block then you can move it around freely and the back wall would also show through, no need for a backless cabinet.

 

For a complex piece I usually build it somewhere else in the plan. Copy it and convert to an architectural block then place this in the plan. If I need to make changes I go back to the original and do them there and then replace the block in the plan. I always find it frustrating when making a complex piece within a single cabinet, every time you change the size of an item another item changes. It would be great if we could actually lock items so they would not automatically change when we change an adjacent item.

 

Graham

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