Anybody here using e Cabinet software?

I use it regularly for my business. I design and cut cabinets for other cabinets shops as well as for end customers. I use it for project estimating, customer presentations and cutlists for my CNC. I’ve even used it recently for a job where I am doing just a bunch of replacement drawers for a customer. I designed the drawers in eCabs and will cut all the parts on my CNC using the cut files generated by eCabs.

There is a long, steep learning curve with the software. Don’t try and invoke “your” way of doing things on the software, you’ll get very frustrated. It is NOT a CAD program. It is driven totally by parameters. Drag and drop don’t apply to this software.

Use the tutorials that Thermwood makes available and practice ALOT!.

Don’t start learning it with a specific job deadline in mind. I did this and had to recut a lot of parts and eliminated any profit I would have made on the job. PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. Hang out on the eCabinets forum and read the discussions and ask questions. The people there are GREAT!

Once you learn it and get proficient with it, you will find it easier and easier to use and you can do some pretty cool things with it.

-- Don, Diamond Lake Custom Woodworks - http://www.dlwoodworks.com - "If you make something idiot proof, all they do is make a better idiot"

I do not presently use it but have in the past and have mixed opinions.

I dread “paper” but like the guy above says……….learning curves are steep, competition is ferocious, so what works for one guy, one shop…….might not be advantageous to the other guy and the other shop.

Been down the road of 20/20, e-cabinet, sketch up, AUTO CAD, and Cabinet Ware. All of which can do fantastic presentation drawings, same for plans and elevations, but there is a point where it IS cost effective and a point where it ISNT and that point/line is thin

As a rule, its there for larger volume shops……..they make a LOT of cabinets, a LOT of furniture, parts, so on and so forth

presently on a job site where the kitchen and millwork guy has a full time chap who does drawing after drawing on “Auto CAD”, every detail is drawn, measured, printed a gazillion times and even with a mountain of paper………they never get it right. Cabinets are too deep, too tall, not deep enough, wrong colour. From where I stand, their “Auto Cad” operator is an idiot and they look foolish. Easy to draw something in 3D…………a whole different ballgame making the drawings work to fit the imperfect world of a job site.

I’m sticking with a drafting board, a pencil and paper

-- "Good artists borrow, great artists steal”…..Picasso

Thanks DLCW, I figure as much, but men those 180 videos are a killer… :)

Moron, if I could draw I would too…. :)

-- Just because you’ve always done it that way doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly stupid.