Construction Templates

Overview

You can copy cabinet attributes from a construction template cabinet and apply them to all or the selected cabinets in your model. It copies attributes that are not considered specific to any given cabinet. Cabinet specific attributes are things like, height, length, width, part visibility...

You can make templates for base, wall, and tall cabinets. Frameless cabinets and Faceframe cabinets have their own templates as well. You control which type of template you are defining by the Cabinet Type attribute in the cabinet

Construction Templates provide you with:

• a mechanism to standardize and test your cabinet composition, structure, and joinery techniques.
• the ability to roll out this standard to the rest of the cabinets in your model ensuring that what you build is what you expect.
  • dynamic updating of a cabinets composition, structure and joinery as you modify these other cabinets.

This is accomplished by designing a cabinet and setting it as a template that the rest of your cabinets can follow.

NOTE: Construction Templates are completely optional. You must have at least one cabinet designated as a template in your model before this option is activated.

CabinetSense will apply templates to matching cabinet types in your model (IE. frameless base templates will be applied to cabinets in your model that match that designation). There are four selections that you can choose from:

• Base
• Upper
• Tall
• Open Base
• Open Upper
• Open Tall
• Closet
• Garage
• Specialty: The purpose of this category is to allow you to designate a non-template cabinet. You may have built a cabinet that does not (and never will) follow any of your normal construction rules. This option allows you to avoid template processing for that cabinet (as long as you don't have a specialty cabinet tagged as a template).

Cabinets that are defined as Construction Template do not get exported for processing. Dragging a template into your model allows you to use it as your construction default without worrying that CS will also send it to your shop floor.

Cabinet sense will apply settings differently for finished and unfinished ends. This makes it possible to apply the correct machining, material type and thickness based on the end type. If your Construction Template component has a finished and an unfinished end (strongly recommend doing this), CS will apply those specific attributes in your model regardless of the location of the end. For example, if you define your Construction Template with a left finished end, and you apply that profile to a cabinet that has a right finished end, CS will apply the finished end attributes (that it found on the left end in your master) to the right finished end that you are applying the changes to. Not only that, CS will also apply all of the joinery that was used on all the parts that mate to the finished end to your target component.

With this feature, it is now possible to save several construction styles in your library and quickly change any model (or part thereof) to any style quickly and correctly.

Anatomy of a Construction Template

You can control as much or as little as you want with your template. Only parts that you insert into the template will affect the cabinets under the control of that template.

For example:

• if you omit placing a partition into your template, all partitions in the controlled cabinets will be unaffected and will retain their individual and unique settings.
• If you do not wish to have your reveals under the control of the template, simply omit doors and drawers from it.
• NOTE: When using doors/drawers to control your reveals, you should have both an upper and lower combination (as shown in the example above). CabinetSense finds the reveals between the lower and upper units and uses this as the vertical spacing. You also need to define the Horizontal Door Gap in your door as CabinetSense will use this setting as well.

It is strongly recommended that you always have:

• a finished and an unfinished end in your template as CabinetSense keeps track of attribute settings for each type of end. CS applies attributes to your controlled cabinets based what their end type is.
• A fixed Shelf. Place one and only one Fixed shelf in your template. A Stretcher is also a fixed shelf and should not be added alongside the full fixed shelf. You may have different joinery techniques depending on whether you are attaching to a finished or an unfinished end. Again, CS keeps track attribute values for both types of ends.

Attributes

CabinetSense will copy the following parts that it finds in your Construction Template: Carcass parts (finished end, unfinished end, top, top back stretcher, bottom, back, front nailer, base), nailer, apron, shelf, partition A good Construction Template will contain all of the parts that you may place in your other cabinets in your model including one finished and one unfinished end.

As mentioned, not all of the cabinet attributes are copied. Here is the list of parts highlighting what can be copied:

• Cabinet:

• Left End, Right End, Top, Bottom, Back, Front Nailer

• Shelf, Partition, Apron, and Nailer
• The attributes, highlighted in the above section also apply to these parts. In addition to the above, there is one additional attribute found in these parts that allow you to turn template processing on or off for the part in question.

• When the attribute is set to Allow Processing, it behaves just like the carcass parts. When set to Do Not Process, template process is bypassed for this specific part. You would typically use this when want to have the part behave in a different manner than your normal parts. (eg. Use a blind dado rather than whatever the template dado specification is)
• Reveals
• Reveals can also be managed by your construction template. CabinetSense will determine how your reveals are managed for finished and unfinished ends, top and bottom reveals and inter-gap reveals.
• Reveals are managed only when your Construction Template has doors and/or drawers that it can use to determine your reveal strategy
• Drawer Boxes, Drawer Fronts, Doors, and Panels
• With the exception of reveals, these components are unaffected by the construction templates.
• As with the Shelf Section (above), you have the choice of turning template processing on or off.

Toolbar

The down arrow toolbar icon is for applying a Construction Template to your selected cabinet(s). CabinetSense will determine which Construction Template applies to each cabinet that you want to affect

Using Construction Templates in your Model

NOTE: Construction Templates are completely optional. You must have them in your model for them to do anything.

To use Construction Templates, you drag each kind of template into your model. (you would typically have a base, wall and tall cabinet template). You may want to place them on a separate scene (or tab) and make them private to that scene. This will keep them from visually interfering with the rest of your model.

Once you have template cabinets in your model, CabinetSense will activate this part of the system and will be ready to update your other cabinets.

• Inserting a Cabinet into your model
• When you drag a cabinet from the components browser, CabinetSense will display an options dialog that allows you to pick which categories of the template to apply to this new cabinet

• Press OK to process the categories that are selected. Pressing Cancel will not copy any attributes to the new cabinet.
• If you change option selections, CabinetSense will ask you if you wish to set this as your new default.
• Inserting a Part into an existing Cabinet.
• When you add a part (EG. shelf, partition, door...), CabinetSense will determine the template that controls this cabinet and will automatically apply the template settings for that part. Note: this is bypassed if the template processing option for the part is turned off.
• Changing a template
• If you change a property in any of your templates, the change will NOT be rolled forward to the cabinets under its control. After you are finished modifying your template cabinet, you must select all of the affected cabinets (or select all the components in your model) and press the Apply Construction Profile button in order to apply the changes.

• CabinetSense will determine the right templates to apply to your cabinets.