FlexiCab Announcement

[gwilson]

Sounds like a great program.
Gerald

[bleeth]

Patrick: A few questions that have occured to me and may be important to others:
Can you import from Autocad, Turbocad, Designcad, etc?
You mentioned import from E-cabs. How does one do that?
Are you speaking of importing drawings or dimensions to a fill-in sheet that interprets parametrically? (or both)
Can you specify and/or modify grain pattern for nesting so if parts are only white mel (for eg) you can cut in any direction, but if plywood it will nest in appropriate grain direction?
Can you input edgebanding by location and thickness?
Can it be set up to directly interface with a drawing program? If not, are you planning on going there? (I know that means really approaching the big boys like microvellum and alphacam or the excellent lower tier guys from places like Millister).
Are your parametrics including door and drawer face cutlists, drawer parts lists modifiable by construction method and hardware and so on?
For those of you thinking about going there, I can tell you that the more sophisticated your needs are, the more time it takes to develop your library. The choices in the parametric fill in sheet are paramount to getting best and highest use and on first glance, looks like you are on the best track I've seen for a popular price cab cam program.

Regards;

Dave

[patricktoomey]

Thanks Gerald, I think people will be really happy with it.

Dave,
After the initial release I'll work on adding a DXF importer which will be part of the Pro version. That would let you bring in data from TurboCad, AutoCad, etc. I'm not sure yet exactly what the limitations will be but we'll add whatever is possible.

Import from eCabinets is done by exporting the cabinet list or the cut list from eCabinets in Excel format. FlexCabs then opens the .xls file and imports the cabinets or the individual parts and takes it from there.

Materials can be configured as with or without grain and each part can be flagged as grain dependant or not so we know if we can rotate it during nesting.

Edge banding would be handled by how the cabinet definition file is setup, it could be configured to allow for edge banding and even to create a part for the edge banding with the necessary length. That would be especially handy for hardwood edging so you would have a parts list for linear cutting. Hmm, linear cutting optimization, version 2? ;-)

Interfacing with drawing programs is definitely in my dreams for a future version.

Thanks for you kind words about the program, I think you'll be happy with it.

With those questions answered, I want to make sure that we stay within the rules of the forum and ask that if anyone has any further questions, please feel free to e-mail them to info@flexcabs.com

[thewoodcrafter]

Patrick,
How is the development and testing going?
Any word when we will have the first release?

[andre]

Patrick
I can't tell if this is a cad cam program or just a cam program Can I design a cabinet on this?

[jseiler]

andre,

Not according to flexcabs.com website. It appears to be just cam. So far, none of us early adopters have received anything yet. I asked for documentation so I could start reading up and was told we would receive a questionaire last week so we could tell patrick how we build cabinets so he could add those things in. I've not received that either.

Nervously waiting,
John

[andre]

Thanks john
the discription is a liitle confusing. It says you can place dados any where you want which leads me to beleive you can design a basic cabinet with it. Otherwise why would I buy it just for cam? nestingcabinet parts seems fairly easy by hand in part wizard and I can design my dados any where i want. Any ways my prs is arriving next week and am excited to get cutting cabinets. It seems that vcarve pro does design, nesting and cam, I think that will probably be my next software purchase.

[andre]

Ps John

I hope everything follows through.

[jseiler]

The basic idea is this:

You start out with cutlists which define the rectangular dimensions of your items. From there, you define operations on those items and how scaling affects them. I'll use my daughter's small dressers as an example. I wanted the top 3/4" below the top of the side pieces. If I scale the dressers to be larger, I'd still want a 3/4" lip, so I'd not want that dimenension to scale, but I want the depth to change (but not the material thickness). I'd want the position of the center brace to move toward the center. I'd define that to scale appropriately. If it works as stated, you can quickly define some basic cabinet operators, scale quickly and get cutting. Sounds good to me. Patrick is well regarded here and that's why I gave him my money before a product even existed. (I've not ever done this before and its unlikely I'll do this again though.)

For cutlists, one could use an excel spreadsheet, or something like thermwood's ecabinet software (free and awesome, but the cam part only works with thermwoods...hence the excitement of flexcabs).

I've not used v-carve pro (but that'll probably be my next software purchase). I understand it doesn't do nesting, but I've not looked at their site in a while. Vcarve is probably a good place to start as a first program. I started with partwizard and now just use it to import stuff I design in turbocad. I've done small cabinets in partwizard, but its easy to make alignment mistakes. With flexcabs, once you have a method of construction lined out, scaling becomes error free and effortless (at least that's my dream since I don't have a manual or a program).

I'll be sure to submit a review once I have some time on it.

l8r,
John

[wardsa]

I am brand new to the CNC world and don't own a machine yet, but I'm in the process to buy. I now have KCdW without the CNC upgrade. Will this software take the place of the KCdW CNC software? If so, that's $3500. I can spend on my wife, OR upgrade a machine?
Terry