ECabinets & ShopBot Link

[kerry_fullington]

Justin,

The cabinet libraries are a great way to get started quickly in eCabinets but the best way is still to build your own library. Take the standard upper,base, tall and corner cabinets that are in the software, change all the construction to build the cabinets the way you want to create your own "Seed" cabinets (you have to give this a lot of thought to make sure everything is just the way you want it) then use those seed cabinets to build a library of every cabinet you might ever want to use. By building a library off your own seed cabinets with proper construction parameters you will have a library that also reflects your construction parameters. If you build your Library with all the correct parameters (this will probably require that you get familiar with the constraint manager so that you can make a cabinet retain some measurements) then everything will be correct when you re-size.

If you decide to download a library, the first thing you will want to do is to take each cabinet (around 225 in my libraries) into the cabinet editor and change the construction parameters to match your own. This is actually more time consuming than creating your own library from scratch and leaves more room for mistakes. The other option is to simply build cabinets the way the author of the downloaded library builds. This will get you started immediately.

Using any cabinet design software, the initial setup of the software is the most important thing you do. Don't skip steps to get up an running faster. These skipped steps will bite you later.

Give your software setup a lot of thought and take time to completely learn every part of the software you are going to need to use. Learning it now will minimize the problems you are going to have down the road.

eCabinets is a very precise software but you must enter all the information it needs to operate.

Kerry

[pappybaynes]

Justin,
I would be interested in what you come up with for a laptop. I am in the same situation...but I was just going to build a very robust desktop for designing. If you can get a laptop with a large HD, Tons of Memory, the problem has always been the video card...I am thinking of a video card(s) with at least a GB of memory on the card. Keep us posted.
Dick

[Gary Campbell]

Dick...
One of the problems going with a laptop is the video card and the fact that many, if not most are using "gamer" style video cards rather than workstation professional graphics cards. Not saying there are none out there, but they are going to be pricey.

In my looking around over the weekend, I found lease return dual Xeon workstations with a Quadro FX 3700 card in them for around $400 on eBay, dozens, if not hundreds of them. This same video card is for sale from $599 to $750. If it was installed in a "normal" economy PC, this card most likely will not live up to its potential, especially for a resource hungry App. like eCabs.

To put eCabinets to full use, and to expect reasonable calculation times requires a professional grade workstation computer. The core architecture of the moterboard is much different than a home desktop. The RAM is ECC (error correcting) and they are designed specifically for this type program. eCabs is also designed specifically for this type of computer.

The minimum recommended specs are here: http://www.ecabinetsystems.com/ecabi...ter_system.htm

And remember: If you go with minimum specs, expect minimum performance. If you go with a non workstation PC expect less.
Gary

[pappybaynes]

Gary,
I had thought all along that IF I could find a laptop capable of handling eCabinets, it would be very high priced. I have been an AMD processor person for quite some time...any problems with using AMD?? Based on what I think you are telling me, if I want the appropriate performance I should not consider building this computer from a barebones kit from Tiger Direct?? We, (one of my sons and I), have built several for friends and family over the past few years...I gather that if I had a "normal" video card with 1GB of memory and its own processor on the card that it would not perform like the Quadro FX 3700??? I know enough to be dangerous, and my son has a degree in computer science but really from the programing end of things...so we are half blind here. I just don't want to have to spend over a $1000 on a design computer...this is where I think MACs have it all over PCs...I will take all the advice I can get before I make the plunge, which won't be until June.
blessings,
Dick

[ken_rychlik]

Dick, I bought a refurbished dell inspiron 9400 laptop for ecabinets about one year ago. I have been pleased with it. I think it was about 1 thousand for it. The new one with the same specs was twice that at the time. If you search for the dell outlet center you will find them. You can also find one with XP which ecabinets likes better. They come with the same warranty as a new one and offer exteded if you wish.

It has the nvidia graqhics card installed, intel centrino duo, 2 gig ram, T7200 @ 2 ghz processor. Thats about all I can remember.

Kenneth

[Gary Campbell]

Dick...
To the best of my abilities.... please assume I dont consider myself the norm. Please also assume that I will not go anywhere near "minimum specs".

At present I have eCabs running on my AMD 2yr old laptop with Vista OS. All things that are wrong, and by the way, it runs fine, but takes a while to calc up cabinet resizes.(seconds, not minutes or days) I see from watchig the videos that these same operations happen in 1 to 1.5 seconds that take 4 or 5 on mine. I am not planning to change my laptop.

I also built my own systems and I am using a P5 quad with 4gig ram and 2 radeon 256mb vid cards in crossfire mode. a real screamer until I installed eCabs... its slower than the laptop even tho it has double the resources in almost every category. I am now going to build another..a workstation. I would recommend that you do too. I may even get a lease return workstation off eBay with the intel 5000 board and put 2 prior gen quad Xeons in it. Since the whole computer is $200 less than the FX3700 card is retail, I can hardly go wrong.

Read this post: http://www.thermwood.com/forums/view...f=3&t=9240

Search Tom's Hardware for items that compare workstations to home pc's for more insight on Core architecture that allows a workstation to carry out a billion calcs 60% better than a desktop with greater resources. They explain that besides the fact that there is actually more in them, what is in them is higher quality. The basic rule as it applies to our ever decreasing component prices... they can get more for these professional grade motherboards, processors and video cards, because they are worth it!

To answer you one direct question about the video card: From what I have read, NO I do not.

Do your homework, I am sure you will do what is right for you and your budget.
Gary

[pappybaynes]

Gary,
As always, thank you for your continued help! I will start searching out those workstations and components. I will keep you informed of my findings and if you find a deal somewhere let me know.
On a side note I have to say that it amazes my wife that there is so much help on this forum...she and I both believe it is a blessing to us...all of us. Thanks Gary, and everyone who contributes.
Dick

[woodworx]

My wife makes fun of me, and rides me a little bit about reading the forum so much. If I had to read all of this info in a book I would have fallen asleep last year and never would have woke up.

I just got my 5mm compression bits from Centurion. They have a 1/4" shank, and they are very sharp. I will be ordering all my bits from them now. These are nice. I only have a single head so this will be the bit I do all my milling with on ecab.

It will take me a while to find the right laptop. I'll find one that works great, and I am am not willing to pay a boat load for it.

[pappybaynes]

Justin,
I have been known to print off a topic and take it to bed to read!! I am getting like the kids, I can read the forum, watch the Redsox and pretend I can hear my wife speaking to me.

Gary,I have been doing my homework and getting pretty excited about having a machine as powerful as the workstations you mentioned...

[Gary Campbell]

For those that prefer to use the climb/conventional/onionskin method for outline parts cutting, this is now supported by the ShopBot Link. For us, this allows us to increase profile speeds from 6 ips to 8 or possibly more and retain great cut quality.
Gary