I am looking for some advice as to how I want to move forward and become a full screen to machine shop. I would rather listen to my peers before I talk with a salesman about this one.

We are an 11 employee shop that builds euro boxes out of a wide mix of materials for both commercial & residential. We also manufacture laminate countertops, legs, reception counters and pretty much anything that comes through the door.

Currently we use Cabinetvision Ultimate to draw pretty pictures for customer presentation or architectural shop drawings. We are not cutlisting out of cabinetvision at this time. (our CV is completely up to date. We have the optimizer but we have yet to purchase the S2M module).

We cutlist manually for many products and also use a house developed parametric product library (primarily boxes only) in Cutrite (old version 7.1) that we use to export to our Holzma saw.

Machining is done on a newer pod and rail Weeke. We simply modify parametrically built woodwop programs on the shop floor.

We are busy like it is 2005 and don't see much of a slow down coming. We need some serious help engineering, getting product to the floor and helping it flow through the shop.. Our process can be improved.....I am sure of it!

I have set a personal goal to have us exporting cutlists and machining through Cabinetvision by years end.

So my question here is 3 fold? I am sure that there are some similar stories out there that have blazed this trail and I am sure that there are lots of do's and don'ts.

How did you go about it? I am personally at capacity so I do not see me be able to roll my sleeves up and make this happen without some external help!

What areas is CV going to fall short? What do you do to make up these gaps?

Do you use the CV optimizer or do you export through 3rd party like Cut-rite?

I understand the breadth of this post and also understand that there are no perfect solutions here but any helpful input would be greatly appreciated.

We are learning to use CV Ultimate with Screen to Machine daily with our cnc router. We took the advice of our sdalesman, their support staff and learned how to go screen to machine in just making the square boxes. Now, we are making tops of all shapes and sizes and cutting all things that would take hours in the old days right from CV.

We skipped the beam saw and went to a router for my own reasons. We are getting ready to add a doweller and post to it if needed. We had the slider to pod and rail and I know you Holzma will be a lot more exacting. So you have it a lot better than we did.

What I will tell you is that all the work you are doing in the drawing stages should be able to save you a lot of time, in the management side using the software to its full potentail. The materials schedule can go way deep and the build schedule can run the full gammit of what you need.

I would talk to your salesman on the time studies of linking the saw and the ptp.

Eventually, your are going to save all that time and bottlenecking of modifying Woodwop or ? on the floor. I can't tell you how much time we are saving, but it is like - always, "Why oh why, didn't I do this sooner."

I will tell you this- I just ran a 100k job in 5 weeks through the shop, (along with 250k worth of other work) I spent the hell time of getting the drawings in CV correct using the cad overlay and such and learned to modify the parts and make sure it all got drilled correctly from dividers to end panels, doors and locks for doors that are rectangular. It took us three days total - 21 hours to cut approx. 1600 parts in various materials from single sided plam, double sided p-lam, cherry mdf, black melamine, silver p-lam melamine, route the requested electric and vent holes in the backs.

It is mind blowing. This is only the sheet goods.

The best part was the savings and stress of the materials acquisitions like Fed Ex charges as we usually run out of edgbanding as we are into the last cabinets ready to go into a semi trailer.

Today, I am learning how to deal with 6 colors of p-lam on a reception die wall so I can save the grief and time involved in ordering pre-layed up panels and not take deal with the hell in sorting all this out.

I hope this helps. Pm me if need be

cm

We are learning to use CV Ultimate with Screen to Machine daily with our cnc router. We took the advice of our salesman and CV's support staff and learned how to go screen to machine in just making the square boxes.

Now, we are making tops of all shapes and sizes and cutting all things that would take hours in the old days right from CV.

We skipped the beam saw and went to a router for my own reasons. Today, we are getting ready to add a doweller and post to it if needed. We had the slider to pod and rail and I know your Holzma will be a lot more exacting. So you will have it a lot better than we did.

What I will tell you is that all the work you are doing in the drawing stages should be able to save you a lot of time, in the management side using the software to its full potentail. Going from the screen to the machine is worth a lot of money, so much, that it you really just will be shocked.

The materials schedule can go deep and the build schedule can run the full gammit of what you need.

I would talk to your salesman on the time studies of linking the saw and the ptp. You ooperator will be pushing a lot of material just reading a function and letting the machine do it instead of the time modifying programs. Eventually, your are going to save all that time and bottlenecking of modifying Woodwop or ? on the floor. I can't tell you how much time we are saving, but it is like - always, "Why oh why, didn't I do this sooner."

I will tell you this- I just ran a 100k job in 5 weeks through the shop, (along with 250k worth of other work) I spent the hell time of getting the drawings in CV correct using the cad overlay and such and learned to modify the parts and make sure it all got drilled correctly from dividers to end panels, doors and locks for doors that are rectangular. It took us three days total - 21 hours to cut approx. 1600 parts in various materials from single sided plam, double sided p-lam, cherry mdf, black melamine, silver p-lam melamine, route the requested electric and vent holes in the backs.

It is mind blowing. This is only the sheet goods.

The best part was the savings and stress of the materials acquisitions like Fed Ex charges as we usually run out of edgbanding as we are into the last cabinets ready to go into a semi trailer.

Today, I am learning how to deal with 6 colors of p-lam on a reception die wall so I can save the grief and time involved in ordering pre-layed up panels and not take deal with the hell in sorting all this out.

I hope this helps. Pm me if need be

cm

CM,
thank you for the time that you put into your response. I am glad to hear that it is working out for you. Did you have a cabinetvision trainer come in house to get you started or did you figure it out on your own? Yes, we are constantly chasing materials and that is a huge reason that this will benefit us. We have some really bad habits that full S2M capabilities should help drive us away from. Cannot wait to get this done!!

They sent an integrator. It took three days. Before anyone came out I had to run a test and fill out some paperwork, and sent them some g-code samples.

It is in your best interest to sit down today, tomorrow, or as soon as possible and develop a standard of frameless and face frame casework construction. Then you will need to decide all of the configurations and put it together. Take for example wall commercial cabinets- do you laminate the exposed bottoms ? Then you will need to tell the software you put the finished end out in the wizard so it knows that it needs x amount of this material to make x amount of cabinets and drill it x distance off the edge of the end of the panel for the offset you choose for the horizantal offset- are you drilling @ 9mm or 9.5mm ? These are all questions you are responsible for and although seems painful, in reality, it will help you tremendously.

The software will know, after you tell it, that you need x amount of layed up sheets that will supply you materials for doors, finished end panels, wall bottoms and fillers. If you tell the software a wall cabinet has a finished interior, and it has finished ends, it will tell you to buy the layed up material double sided. You do have to tell the software that an open/finished interior wall cabinet has different types of materials. Like the top, I use a material I have named Finished Int P-Lam, for the Back I call in Fin Int 1/4 P-Lam for the Ends I use Double P-Lam. With all this set up, the drafters, 2 of them, draw anything and check the box properties "Exposed Interior" and I can tell exactly what to order or press when we are in the materials ordering phase.

It has been very painful. Not because of CV, but because we were so dis-organized, that we had to get it all cleaned up. My guys hate and I mean hate when we build off the ptp if the router goes down. So much so we are buying another very soon, so we will have 2 routers, 2 banders, an auto doweller. a manual combo drill we use just for the horizontals and CV.

You have a lot to do, but their is no way we could be posting the kind of numbers we are without CV and our machinery supplier. Seriously, I can send a radius die wall to the router and our most inexperienced guy can take it to the horiz drill and place holes and dowels in the "studs" I cut with wire chases, on the router and have it standing up in about 45 minutes. The experienced guys can then have it ready to ship in days instead of a week. The linear walls are cut with all the materials, panels, all of it, and the inexperienced ones can put most of it together without help.

A lot of software can do all this, but like you, I had CV Ultimate and was using for drawings only. I finally had enough and took the time to set it up, get a router and post to it. In your case, you can get it to post to both the saw and the ptp and tell your salesperson what your needs are. The integrator we used was very knowledge able, on the software side and we learned a lot, very fast. I select one person that I used for training that used to work in a cabinet shop and operate a router, and he has cut a lot of time off of the learning curve. I am positive they can post to your Weeke and send radius work to it in its envelope. I was going to do that with our older ptp, but I reached a point I was tired of it and the damn altering programs on the floor.

Don't kid yourself, this is some work and it will take some testing, but in the end, it will be worth it.

I think you'll note that the responses you received focused on using CV S2M using nesting and a router. There's a reason for this. I would suggest you talk to more CV users using saws and pod-and-rail machines or open yourself up to alternatives that will give you optimal results for the hardware you have.

Les- I see your point, but then again, I contacted you and your sales representative and wanted me to use a different software to design than that of your offering. So how does this help Doug ? A shop is already using a brand and knows how to get the pretty pictures to sell, yet has not got the full potential of going to machine. What I see, is he can get all the reports going this week. I also see his operators just loading parts into the ptp and pulling the program via barcode and processing the part.

His plants success is also hinging on his willingness to implement a system or multiple systems and stick to them. Setting corrections at certain junctures along the way. You are adding no validity to the argument what so ever insinuating the ptp/saw link does not work from CV and that multiple users have had problems in the past. Truth be told, I have had and still have problems, but that is due to forcing a massive uphill learning curve of letting the machines do the work and learning to control them vs. delegating and watch man hours just run out the funds of my checkbook on antiquated methods.

His best option @ this point in time is to get the materials schedules and construction methods in place and produce cut lists for the sawyer and take the time to implement the weeke from the office with the reports CV has to offer. He can do this without spending a dime. When he decides to link with you or CV, or whatever he chooses, he is that much further ahead due to cleaning this up now, or sooner than later.

Les is correct in that I need to zero in on those who are using CV in a workcell setup. That was part of the reason for my post.

The input that CM has given is also valuable and I sincerely appreciate it. We may not be using the same hardware but we are starting at the same spot and looking for the same product off of the back end.

Les, I am sure that you know your competition very well and are drilling down at a weak spot. For all I know I am standing knee deep in the middle of one of CV's weak spots and am not aware of it. Once again this was the reason for my post!! I am pretty sure that the CV will work very well with my Weeke as I have been told by several that the Alpha Cam based post works quite well with my machine. I am a little more concerned about the saw and label interface and would appreciate any input from those that have traveled that path.

CM is very correct in that most of the work that I need to do has nothing to do with machines, optimizers or labels. I am quite aware of how much work that really is and do know that it is where I need to start. It would be very nice to know what the whole picture looks like as I do not want to "go to the show, take advantage of some reduced pricing and make a mistake" I have seen that too many times! Until someone tells me " we tried this and I mean we really tried and it did not work" I will believe that I have the right hardware and most of the right software for the right solution.

@ cabinetmaker - I didn't say that Cabinet Vision's saw/ptp links don't work. I was making the point that what works in a nested based manufacturing setup doesn't necessarily apply to a saw/ptp setup. Therefore, I suggested Doug get more input from CV users who use that manufacturing approach. Sometimes a single source solution works, sometimes it doesn't. I do know that there are stronger optimizers out there than Cabinet Vision's, our own included.

Of course it makes sense to be organized and know your business well before jumping in to new investments. Adding new software or new machinery or new construction processes aren't going to remedy fundamental problems in the design or management areas.

On the other hand, manufacturing changes can influence design, plant layout, and other organizational elements. Looking ahead to how changes will be affected by past and future decisions only makes sense.

Doug has made an investment in CV to produce specific results. He now wants to do more. Should he stay with what he has and invest more or go in a different direction? I was only suggesting that he keep asking questions and evaluate the experiences of other users.

Cabnetware/Cabnetvision and STM will post flawlessly to a saw and PTP. With the Holzma there are a few ways to get where you want to be with STM. You will optimize in vision but will have to run through Cut-rite to get to the saw, its easy and if you want labels with part pics for the PTP operator you will only be using Cut-rite as a proxy, the integrator will set you up for success. Vision and STM will take you where you want to be. Then for all other custom work AutoCAD and AlphaCAM IMHO gets this done well. Have run all this software in many shops from small to large doing miles of basic laminate commercial boxes and tops to complex fixtures, etc. There are also other ways to get there if you are AutoCAD proficient but that is a different road. Bottom line is from my experience the upgrade will get you there if you have someone that can get their head into the software, good luck with your adventure.

Before you invest any more money in cabinet vision I would get something in writing from Planit to the effect that if they sell cabinet vision to a competitor who then terminates the program you are then entitled to a refund of your money.

I bought a $5,600 seat of Planit Fusion only to get a call from 20-20 a few short months later to say that Planit had sold out to them and that they were terminating the program. Planit coulnd't even call me themselves to tell me this. I then called Planit to ask if I could apply the money that I paid them for Fusion towards cabinetvision given that it would suit my needs equally well to which they said no and then proceeded to try and sell me a seat of cabinet vision at full price given that I was now back in the market for software.

In these software conversations people are so quick to push cabinet vision, why is this? What will cabinet vision do that others will not? I think that many of you bought cabinet vision because you think that there is a direct linear correlation between price and quality but can you really point to features which distinguish the quality of the software from its competition?

When investing $25,000 you need to consider the integrity of the company, not just the quality of their product.

or at a minimum, ask yourself what the value of your investment would be if suddenly there were no future updates, support, user forum, etc. Planit will honor your purchase only as long as there is not a more profitable avenue, and as soon as this presents itself they will wash their hands of you.

KD,
thanks for the input. I figured that this had been done many times before and that we would not need to re-invent the wheel here. I will keep working to wrap my head around the software and get us ready

AGC,
sorry for your luck on that one. This could happen with just about any company be it a machine or software. One of the calculated risks of making investments. Cabinetvision Solid is one of Vero's core products so I would think that we are relatively safe for a while.

Not with any company, it wouldn't happen to one of my customers and I suspect you wouldn't allow it to happen to one of yours either.

ANY company can go out of business leaving their customers unsupported, that is both unfortunate and understandable, however, this was a case of a large company making a business decision to actively sell a product that they knew was imminently obsolete. They weren't going out of business or even struggling so far as I know, just greedy.

I do not agree that all large companies are void of ethics but I do understand the value staying with a company given your familiarity with their product, albeit at what I would consider at a higher risk than that associated with the use of a comparable product who could also potentially pull the rug from under their customers yet has no track record of doing so.

Sorry, I know this sounds less like honest advice and more like an angry rant at this point.

AGC- thanks. I have my own rants, and I truly understand yours. Your rant has merit and I'm glad you brought it up here. It is truly making me think twice on another key with them.

cm

@AGC - Keep in mind that Doug already has an investment in Cabinet Vision. The question was whether or not he should invest more with them to add their screen to machine components. For Doug this may be the best move, or he may get more for his money putting together a different solution. It's all about making informed choices.

Unfortunately, much of hardware and software supplied to the woodworking industry is mired in an outdated allegiance to proprietary systems, eschewing standards that would give shop owners real freedom of choice. The few standards that exist, like DXF and CPOUT, got there through sheer mass, not because they were the best for the job. This makes moving to different software or hardware prohibitively expensive, and that means you have to be more and more careful of what you buy as the price goes up.

Les, or Anyone Else-

Please give us some options, like Solid Works ? or ? Please give us an idea how to go from approved shop drawings to manufacturing, labeling, etc.

Thanks

I guess that would depend on what is important to you. I have specific needs of my software which are not currently being met which requires separate programs, workarounds and wasted time. If I could find some alternative that would address these issues I would see value in that.

Can any of you speak to whether or not your software is capable of the following:

Infinitely customizable reports. I want to generate reports per working cell and I want to manipulate the output relative to each part in my library regarding which reports this part appears on, what information about this part is disseminated, its order relative to the other parts on the list, etc.

Inventory - I know that most of the programs will generate an order list, and that is fine if you are using JIT but I use an s,S inventory policy and would like to be able to set all parameters of this policy on my nesting software, which would then, ideally, alter the inventory as a result of each nest and communicate to my accounting software at the designated time given that, for me, this is where my orders originate from.

Drawing - for me, those cartoon 3d drawings of kitchens are useless. High end residential architects do all of their work in 2d black and white so why shouldn't this be good enough? That said, it seems that none of the software packages do a good job with line drawings. We now use autocad which is not ideal given that I am not nesting from autocad.

Other options that would be nice:

- an ability to sort the label output so that parts can be grouped and assigned different colored labels which would simplify their immediate destination upon leaving the router

- communication with accounting software to streamline quoting, invoicing, change orders, etc

- also, I don't understand why such a premium is placed on the learning curve of a software in these conversations. There is always going to be an inverse correlation between the level of customization afforded the user and the ease of use, however, for those of you put a premium on a low learning curve, know that what your up front investment of time when learning difficult software is much cheaper than what you pay continually by choosing to use a simple, rigid program that forces you to reconcile the way that you want to do it versus the way that the software will allow you to do it.

@cabinetmaker - That's a worthwhile request but clearly I can't give an unbiased response. And no one answer would be right for every shop.

How orders come in, what needs to be presented to the client, sales volume, type of work performed, number of designers/engineers, type and number of CNC machines, assembly processes, etc. - all of these would and should influence the software (and hardware) you select.

I suspect that what often motivates decisions is problem-solving - we need to cut more material, so let's get another saw (but if it's a different brand, will our software communicate with it?), or a bigger saw, but maybe all we need is a better optimizer that can run our saw more efficiently. Or maybe it's time to move to nesting, especially if we don't have the floor space to install another panel saw. Does our software support nesting? No? What should we use?

And now the client wants rendered 3D drawings of the finished work. Do these need to be tied into manufacturing? In most cases that would be ideal to avoid double work, but not everyone agrees.

How often do we take the time or have the opportunity to step back and take a wider view of what we do and ask, "Is this the only way to do this?" If the task is to get ketchup out of the new bottle, you might hit the bottom with your palm, or rotate the bottle and let air do the job, or switch to a squeeze bottle - but chances are you're going to use whatever method you know until you know there's an alternative.

Do you need to draw the parts or could you generate the data in a spreadsheet? Should it be tied to order entry? Are you creating programs at your CNC or generating ready-to-run programs from the office in a way that's portable to any CNC you buy? If you work with an architect that gives you AutoCAD drawings, you have no choice but to get AutoCAD and someone who can use it.

Should you make doors and drawer boxes, or buy them? Why? Do you want to be a cabinetmaker or do you want to make money? I'm not suggesting the two are mutually exclusive but the focus is different, and the person with the second answer may be more open to bringing in non-cabinet work.

Sometimes the work you bring in drives the choices you make, sometimes it's the other way around.

I guess my long-winded point is to be as wide-eyed and long-viewed as you can, acquiring as much information as you can, and know your (and your business') strengths and weaknesses. There are no "best" tools - only the best tool for conditions that most likely will change.

Hi all,
This industry is light years behind what the aerospace industry is doing with CadCam. If you look at Boeing they have what AGC is looking for on a Global scale, they are able to take 3D models of the product and batch it out to different manufacturers around the globe and have all the components come together with tolerances closer than our wood movement along with all accounting and data management updated in real time with every action performed day in and day out.

The OP asked a specific question sort of and here we are again going on about the shortcomings of the available software for our purposes, In my opinion all the ones I have used suck because they are not all inclusive and you need someone that is fluent in many disciplines to get you to where you need to be as your volume becomes too large for the current management of all the data needed to process work through the door.

There is no perfect software that will drive this process although Les' offering looks to be promising (yet I have never used it) if you are fully immersed in AutoCAD.

There are ERP systems that are fully customizable that import .csv files from Vision that will track the project through, order your materials and hardware automatically for you and give you thousands of follower sheets to run through the shop for all the minutia involved but requires the right person to manage it.

My hope is that there are people working to resolve these issues but it will literally take years of man hours to code a program that even thinks of covering everything for everybody since there is no standard even though there are standards. Just look at the earlier posts of the young man trying to figure out why his shop foreman connects all the cabinets together, then belt sands them before post cladding the edges....whew!

It took decades and millions for Boeing to produce their proprietary software and no shop can afford to do that but that would be the way to go.
This could go on forever.....
I have used Planit products since they were available on 5.5" floppies so I know every back door tweak needed to get where I need to go and this also makes me biased towards their products but they are a huge Corp that cares nothing of their users and will not spend the money to write the code needed to improve the product into the next level.

Sorry for the long post guys,
Hope you all find a way to improve your systems to control production and data management through software.

I've been using Planit software (first CW now CV) for maybe 6 years now.

Just to answer some of your questions AGC:

- CV uses Crystal Reports, and apparently (from what has leaked on the forums) a new reporting engine in the next version. It is "infinitely customizable" with of course the limitation that you need to either know Crystal Reports or hire someone who does. But yes, you can have a report tell you anything you like, so long as there is a source for the data.

- CV is engineering software and doesn't do any inventory management. We've built our own MRP system around CV and CW in our shop, and have allowed something like 20 other shops now to use it. I'm not pushing it or anything- in fact we turn down WAY more shops who ask to use it than we allow. Here's some (really old) videos if you want to see the kind of stuff you can do with the data out of CV:
http://www.fletcherwoodproducts.com/Enterprise_Manager_Video.html.

- I find the line drawings to be pretty good. CV is a solid modeller, so (barring any bugs) if you don't think that line should be there you're just wrong because it comes from a 3D model.

As far as labeling- if you are doing it in the office you can use reports to create any type of part distribution you'd like. You'd have a report for the red labels, one for the green, etc. I am 100% opposed to in-office label printing, but you could. To do it at the machine, I'm not sure what you'd do- have multiple label printers each with a different color of label? I think it is eCabinets that prints a different color dot on each label per cabinet for easy sorting, but you need an expensive color label printer.

- There is a big learning curve with any advanced capabilities. CV has a built in scripting language so that you can automate the way you do things beyond what their wizards can do. Well, if you want to use that you either need to become a programmer or hire somebody who can. Same with reports. Same with advanced CAD features. Makes sense to me.

I was at tje same placemats years ago. We upgraded to the s2m and it was worth every penny. At the time we were beam saw and Ptp we generated code and printed barcode label for parts. It required an integrator from cv. I then hired an independent guy that really knows cv to help us get set up and organized. 2 years ago we converted tonested base. Sales people draw it, production checks it and sends to machine. No pparametric program no wasted time. If you are already that far down the road with cv, I would suggest moving forward with them. We do not run it thru any third party software

need cabnetware to razorgage to work for stile & face frame cut list .. what program best for this with out going to cabnetvision at this moment ... thanks for your alls input