Anyone drawing cabinetry?

eric_schimelpfenig

As the title says, is anyone out there using Onshape for cabinetry? If so, what's your process? Are you using it for designing spaces, or manufacture too?

owen_sparks

@3dcad are you about?

He designs and builds cabinetry with Onshape, in a factory that he also designed in Onshape...

Cheers,

Owen S.

eric_schimelpfenig

I'd be interested in seeing that! Post up @3dcad!

3dcad

@eric_schimelpfenig

Was too deep into robot programming last weeks, haven't had time for forums lately. But yeah, also that robot cell was born in Onshape and all products that run through.

We are contract designer / manufacturer so I can't really post that much of our latest designs into forums.

The process for us is:

- Use Onshape to create furniture models in fraction of the time it used to take with traditional 3d cad without multi-part modeling studio

- Create light drawings for production (can't wait for woodwork cnc's to suck up steps or someday connect directly to Onshape for nc data)

- Create assembly steps and use images to make instructions

- Render in keyshot to get the product images

Sometimes we also make the layout plan for retailer or render some room like spaces.

Are you aiming into cabinet business/industry?

john_mcclary

3dcad said:

- Create light drawings for production (can't wait for woodwork cnc's to suck up steps or someday connect directly to Onshape for nc data)

VisualCAMc is released for Onshape now

owen_sparks

Webinar today...

3dcad

@john_mcclary

IMHO CAMs are only good for 4+ axis machines and we are mostly working with flat panels and 3-ax machines (well machines might have dozen axis but only in 3 directions ) The problem is that CAMs concentrate on milling while we concentrate on efficient drilling.

VisualCAMc for Onshape is CAM software application on the cloud that allows you to create 2 ½ Axis, 3 Axis and 3+2 milling cutter paths for Onshape design files.

john_mcclary

@3dcad
So you code everything manually for the most part? Yikes
Why bother modeling it then, just go to paper an pencil 

MecSoft_Support

Hello, I just wanted to chime in here and mention that VisualCAMc for Onshape supports a variety of hole machining operations including drilling, deep drilling, countersink drilling, peck-chip drilling, as well as sorting rules for drilling holes, especially designed for flat panels with hundreds of hole holes to drill is any pattern.  You can also post the drilling paths as canned drill cycles or as linear motions so there are many options in VisualCAMc for drilling operations.  We encourage everyone to give VisulCAMc a test drive and let us know how you like it!

3dcad

@john_mcclary
Sometimes we create 3d models from dxfs exported from cnc

We model because we wan't to see the design before production, check interfere, render product images, create assembly instructions and avoid manual calculation of things. We do not model for cnc.
Today's woodworking machinery are so easy to program that it's only matter of few minutes (way faster than Onshape sketcher). And we use macros for standard stuff, environmental & global variables to keep programs easy to update on hardware changes and sometimes combine programs using if-clauses and variables accessible from worklist to quickly select different 'configuration' for drilling.

But note that we mostly produce our own standard models in reasonable batches repeating time after time, it's completely different story in batch size 1 production where few minutes programming per piece makes huge difference. 

@MecSoft_Support
I will certainly give it a try! Do you support European woodworking machines like Homag, Biesse, Scm etc.?

MecSoft_Support

3dcad said:

@MecSoft_Support
I will certainly give it a try! Do you support European woodworking machines like Homag, Biesse, Scm etc.?

VisualCAMc supports machines that read standard G&M code or ISO g-code. As some of these machines use proprietary code format we would have to take a look at this to see if this can be supported. If you could send us a sample code that works with your machine along with the list of G & M codes supported to support@mecsoft.com, we can take a look at this to see if this can be supported.