Cabinet planner verses Sketchup

Send a message to DaveR. He can advise you and show you the limits- or lack of- for sketchup.

I’d rather design my own but you don’t sound like you are interested in that. so…I don’t think you’d like SU.

-- Dan, Sterling Alaska, http://sullcon.homestead.com/ Before you criticise some one, walk a mile in their shoes...then you will be a mile away and you have their shoes!

yeah, I am thinking about trying sketchup just to see how hard it would be to work with. Free is better then 100. But yes, I am not as much into designing my own, I like simple does it. I actually think cabinet planner might be comparable t o software worth 2000 or more. Course I could be wrong on that opinion.

By the way, for those reading this, I look at projects page on a regular basis, and you woodworkers here are nothing short of amazing with the projects you all complete. All great jobs. We build kitchens and do a great job but the custom furnishings I see on here appear to be packed full of artistic flavors combined with great building skills.

-- Jerry Nettrour

Have you also checked out ecabinets its free also

-- Jim from Heirloom Woodshop Southern Oregon

I have a copy of ecabinets. The only complaint that I have is the learning curve is big. I need to spend more time trying to understand it but it is very difficult. But it is free.

-- T. Nelson

You could do what you want with SketchUp. It wouldn’t be very difficult to set up but it would require learning the program. You’d hardly be using any of SketchUp capabilities either.

I get the impression though that you don’t want to learn SketchUp so my advise would be to pony up for Cabinet Planner if that’s doing the job for you. Consider it part of the cost of doing business.

If you are really interested in actually learning to use SketchUp, I can show you some basics to see if it would work for you.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Sketch up is a great tool, but I’ll be honest, I hate it. I’ve sat for an hour an a half trying to figure out how to create the shape I want, then just said to heck with it, and drew it by hand using an architects scale. There is a lot of info available for Sketch Up available online, if you’re willing to watch a bunch of YouTube videos, but when I first read about it, I got the impression that it was an intuitive program, which I don’t think it is at all. Now what I use the most for designing is a graphic design program, Adobe Illustrator.

-- "At its best, life is completely unpredictable." - Christopher Walken

Funny how different folks have different impressions of things. I found SketchUp was indeed very intuitive and I don’t have any difficulty drawing what I want to draw. I guess it could be a learning style or something. Oh well, each to his own.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Yeah, I agree and think I will likely ‘pony up’. The cost for cabinet planner is tiny in the big picture and since I know it and like it, then great! The one thing I don’t like though is you must have a wall in order to place a cabinet. This means I cannot draw an island into a kitchen, so I just place a fake wall in the drawing and put the island on that, though then it does not look to be an island which just means I have to explain to the customer. Otherwise, it is very user friendly and even will give me a material list. I have been doing my own designing and material list for so long though, I mainly just use the material list it provides as an estimation. Before cabinet planner I used graph paper and excel documents for calculations. I still use excel to organize door and drawer parts and calculate my material.

Oh, and by the way, I am going to go look at a North State 20” planer ($750) tonight, I likely will buy it and hope this turns into a gloat. Not sure what the North State retails at but a comparable Grizzly would be around $1500. I am hoping he will take an offer of $600. It is 5hp, 25 amp and around 900 lbs so I am sure it is built strong. With the sale of my DW735 the upgrade should only amount to about 400.00 out of pocket. Just to good to pass on.

Thanks everyone,

Jerry

-- Jerry Nettrour

I bet even Christopher Walken would find sketchup predictable.

-- Dan, Sterling Alaska, http://sullcon.homestead.com/ Before you criticise some one, walk a mile in their shoes...then you will be a mile away and you have their shoes!