Cabinet Vision

Cabinet Vision is one of the most ubiquitous pieces of software in the industry, however, it’s also one of the leading causes of revenue loss and production slow downs because the fundamental understanding of Cabinet Visions strengths and weaknesses is wrong.

Cabinet vision advertises itself as the one software to rule them all in a cabinet shop offering some drafting capabilities, automation capacity, rendering, 3d modeling, cost estimating, etc. The question is, does it actually perform efficiently in all of these areas? Or is it bogging down the engineering team in a program that is limited in its use case?

It all boils down to what you’re using it for and in my professional opinion, most custom cabinet shops do not use it for what it is best at. Most custom cabinet shops are losing money using this software because most custom cabinet shops were either sold a lie about cabinet vision, or haven’t done enough independent research and testing to ensure it’s the best tool for the job they’re using it for. Yes, i can make every cut I need on a cabinet with a worm drive saw. Is it the best most efficient tool possible for every cut? No. Will I lose money if I use this tool for every cut? yes.

So why is it that the majority of cabinet shops believe that one drafting software will be able to do handle every engineering task efficiently? Sales, and the desire to dig ones heels in on the sunk cost fallacy.

Now, I’m not saying Cabinet Vision has no value in the shop, I believe that Cabinet Vision has it’s place, but I don’t think it’s a valuable tool for custom cabinets, just as I don’t think the CNC router is the best tool in most shops for cutting out custom cabinets. There are always exceptions to the rule and these include:

• Larger cabinet shops where quality control becomes more difficult to manage within the shop,

• Semi-custom cabinets where cabinet sizes, materials, and layouts are limited with minor adjustments.

• Shops doing high volume of the same kitchen and bathroom layouts.

In these specific instances Cabinet Vision is the best tool you can use to produce cabinet parts for assembly. This is where Cabinet Vision shines the most and how it can be leveraged to it’s greatest extent. However if a shop starts to stray too far outside of these lines with Cabinet Vision, then it starts losing money rapidly.

Many shops use Cabinet Vision for completely custom jobs, they’ll use it for the initial design consultation, estimating, and final engineering and manufacturing of the cabinets on the CNC. However most of these shops are fully custom cabinet shops. They produce one off kitchens, one off designs, and move on to the next one. These cabinet shops are losing money every time they complete a one off kitchen on cabinet vision. So let’s go over why.

I’m already a firm believer that for custom cabinet cut outs, the CNC isn’t the best tool. While the CNC is great for the use cases that I listed for Cabinet Vision, it also suffers from many weaknesses when applied to fully custom cabinets. For a further breakdown of using the CNC vs other tools for manufacturing cabinets see this blog post: Do You Really Need a CNC?

Onto the first stage in the process. put yourself in your designer shoes and you’re meeting a client at their house to go over various cabinetry, trim, and other designs. Is Cabinet Vision the best tool for this? Perhaps if you product offerings are semi-custom cabinets with preset designs. However, if you’re a high end custom cabinet shop it’s not. Why? Because clients in this market expect custom, they expect bespoke trim designs, they expect fully custom cabinet widths, heights, etc. So are you going to bring you bulky tool that can’t be flexible and design on the fly at the clients house? or are you going to bring a tool that can quickly draft up a more accurate display in real time?

For me, I choose the tool that can quickly draft up what the client wants in real time, so i can close the sale or lead them closer to a close while upselling designs, materials, and accurately estimating costs based on experience and knowledge of the industry. This is what I use AutoCAD for. It is remarkably fast at producing 2d drawings on the fly, adjusting them, and editing them for clients in real time. In addition, it’s much faster at creating floor plans, elevations, and section views that can be easily displayed and navigated in meetings with clients, general contractors, and designers. A competent draftsman with experience in the industry can quickly move from initial design, through the redlining process, and to the shop faster than someone on cabinet vision can produce the first iteration of a custom kitchen . Even the large shops that use cabinet vision use AutoCAD as their primary drafting tool, Cabinet Vision is just used for manufacturing cabinets and maintaining quality control.

Now if you are doing only semi custom cabinets or high volume of the same kitchen and bathroom layouts, then yes Cabinet Vision is much faster than AutoCAD. So as a cabinet shop it’s rather important to understand where each tool is effective and how to leverage each tool to it’s greatest extent.

Now on to estimating. Is Cabinet Vision the best for estimating materials costs? Well I personally would say it depends again on the use case. For custom work it does have benefits since it automatically will create cut lists and will give you a very detailed and accurate breakdown for sheet goods and hardware required. However the trade off is in the amount of time required to generate the initial design and fully engineer the layout to the field conditions. This is where the debate is primarily centered on which program is faster.

Most large scale jobs are bid on a fixed cost basis using Bluebeam fairly accurately by an estimator and doesn’t take a considerably long time to estimate materials with a properly kitted out tool box. The same principles apply to estimating kitchens for clients directly for fully custom millwork. Again like I said previously if the shop is doing semi-custom cabinets and or high volume orders of the same layouts, then Cabinet Vision wins hands down.

From my perspective, while Cabinet Vision is a powerful tool, it’s a misunderstood tool. It’s a great tool to have in the tool box of a millwork shop that offers semi-custom lines and high volume lines. However, when it comes to fully custom work, it doesn’t do well. While it can do fully custom work, it’s not the right tool for the job. There are other tools that are better. Now the wise cabinet shop manager needs to ask the following questions. What products am I offering? Should I limit myself to Semi-custom cabinets? What about high volume cabinets? Or, do I want to solely offer fully custom cabinets and millwork? Does the shop have the capacity to offer multiple tiers: mass produced, semi custom, and fully custom? What is the best way to tool my engineers, designers, and the shop to produce these offerings?

One last thing before I go. I can’t even believe that I have to say this, but I have seen it. If you don’t have any automated equipment like automated panel saws or a CNC do NOT use cabinet vision. It is a program that requires the entire automation system of CNC’s and panel saws to function effectively. Seriously, use AutoCAD LT in combination with Sketchup. These two programs are much less expensive and far superior to cabinet vision in a non-automated shop it’s not even close. Sketchup even offers similar features as Cabinet vision to generate cut lists with user generated add-on programs. It is also compatible with D5 Render a free program to generate even more realistic renderings than Cabinet Vision.