Interiorcad for smal businesses

[Walter_J]

Hi All, 

 

I’m running a one person (European) cabinet shop, working mostly for architects or small project developers. The custom, flexibel and personal approach is very important to differentiate my shop from the bigger cabinet making companies. It is not my goal to expand a lot in terms of expensive CNC or employees. I’m also sharing a wood shop with 2 other cabinet- and furniture makers so an extra pair of hands when needed is always nearby. So clean and precise 2d drawings on part/panel level is key in my wood shop to allow quickly help from others.

 

I made a career switch from a mechanical 3d designer, working with Inventor and Autocad for over 10 years, to a cabinet maker 3 years ago. So I got a bit experience with (non)parametric CAD. After using Sketchup, fusion 360, Blum Dyna, Autocad and some free plugins for my cabinet designs, It’s now time to invest in a dedicated cabinet software to reduce the time of creating, design and drawings for approvals, production drawings and cutlists.

 

Vectorworks Interiorcad came on my radar and I'm now gathering some experiences and answers. It would be great to find them here: 

 

- How does designing in VW (3D) compare to paramtric designing in e.g Inventor, fusion with assemblies, parts and constraints? 

 

- Is it possible to generate easily a set of 2d drawings on part/panel and sub-assembly level

 

- Does interiorcad have/keep an up to date catalogue from leading fitting brands like Blum, Hettich, HÄfele?

 

- Can you create custom cabinet fittings/parts/connectors with a related hole pattern in the panels?

 

- Is it possible to generate printable lables togheter with the cutlust?

 

Tank you for your advice and other insights. 

 

Best

 

W

 

[mgebel]

Hello,

 

I've been using InteriorCAD for about 2 years, and I have very little experience in Fusion360, Solidworks, Inventor, etc, but I'm familiar with how they work.

 

InteriorCAD is designed to be a dedicated parametric solution for cabinet manufacturing, but it can be adapted to work for any sheet-good cnc based manufacturing (metal, glass, stone, composites, etc). From my understanding, the 3d modeling environment of interiorcad is more like a hybrid CAM platform. When modeling parts using solid subtraction, you are in fact creating toolpaths (i.e. contours, dados, rabbets, drillings, etc). These are smart objects that are parametrically driven by the parts they are attached to. The advantage here is that you can effectively skip the CAM programming step and go straight from modeling IC objects in the design layer to your CNC machine, assuming all layers and tools and machine settings are programmed correctly.

 

However, if you are interested in an automated solution for nesting and labeling, you will need a standalone program like Cutrite or another optimizer. 

 

There are many standard fittings (blum, hettich, etc), but in my experience you will need to make many of your own depending on what global market and what type of hardware you typically use. This is not difficult to do in most cases. 

 

If you are looking to compare InteriorCAD to other similarly classed programs, I would look at something like Microvellum or Wood CAD/CAM. Both of these operate using similar principles with similar quasi-CAM modeling project workflows, but they are based on AutoCAD. I have a Colleague who works in Wood CAD/CAM and uses Cutrite for nesting and labeling. I have been able to send him DXF files that are indistinguishable from the output of his programs, however, he has pointed out several key features in Wood CAD/CAM that are lacking in IC... It seems reasonable that these features/capabilities could be integrated to IC eventually...

 

IC does have some useful 2d Part Layout tools, but they can be painful to use at times. I would love to see some additional development added to this feature. As it stands, the part layout objects work somewhat similar to viewports, but there is no way to edit (add/remove/relink) objects to an existing part layout... I would love to see a new tab in the navigation pallete that lists all of the cabinet objects/custom parts in the project for direct part layout creation and editing... 

 

I would absolutely recommend IC for anyone working in VW who does flatbed CNC cabinet fabrication, but I would not discount the benefit of maintaining a workflow in Fusion or Solid works (or masterCAM or other 3d CAM software). In particular, if you are using any parts that utilize 5- or 6-axis milling, you will need something with a little more horsepower to generate 3d toolpaths. 

 

Hope that helps, and good luck.

M

 

 

 

On 5/30/2021 at 8:43 AM, Walter_J said:

 

- How does designing in VW (3D) compare to paramtric designing in e.g Inventor, fusion with assemblies, parts and constraints? 

 

- Is it possible to generate easily a set of 2d drawings on part/panel and sub-assembly level 

 

 

- Does interiorcad have/keep an up to date catalogue from leading fitting brands like Blum, Hettich, HÄfele?

 

- Can you create custom cabinet fittings/parts/connectors with a related hole pattern in the panels?

 

- Is it possible to generate printable lables togheter with the cutlust?

 

Tank you for your advice and other insights. 

 

Best

 

W