Software Entry Inexpensive & Easy
Long established joinery company Lee Brothers in Rotorua is a traditional firm producing anything from timeless timber joinery to modern and innovative kitchens and cabinetry fittings. We asked current owner, Paul Ingram about his software experiences since adopting Cabinet Vision several years ago. Here is what he had to say.
We have been using Cabinet Vision Solid Essential for several years to produce drawings both for presenting to customers and then for production drawings to be worked from. The Essential version was an inexpensive way to get into a quality drawing package and required very little in the way of training to get started. Subsequently, we purchased a Biesse CNC router in 2014 and utilised the software that came with the machine. We invested quite a bit of time into developing the spreadsheet and it worked well for us initially and gave us a good understanding of programming.
Two years down the track we were looking to streamline and automate our production. There are several solutions available and having looked around and trialed a couple I chose Cabinet Vision and purchased at AWISA this year. I already knew Phil Smith and Jason Chittenden of Joinery IT from their support of our Cabinet Vision Essential packages. Jacqueline Crossley was helpful with her experience as someone who has used Cabinet Vision for production. I went with the package Joinery IT suggested – Solid Advanced and S2M Standard. We bought a production license and an additional drafter key for design. We were also able to trade our essential licenses in against the new package.
We were running jobs from Cabinet Vision to the CNC straight away and had only a couple of very minor adjustments to make. Support from Joinery IT was very good getting things up and running and making sure we were productive immediately. We are 3 months in now and already have a reasonable library that we are fine tuning and adding to. Once I had a basic understanding about how the cabinet editing works the software allowed me to build and fully detail cabinets so that drilling and routing at the assembly stage can be almost eliminated. Once a cabinet has been detailed to how we want to manufacture, it’s saved to the library and is ready to use again. To date there have not been any cabinets we’ve been unable to produce. Joinery IT have been very responsive when it comes to fi ne tuning and setting up any processes that we have specifically requested. Cabinet Vision produces efficiently optimized nesting and the reports for ordering of materials are useful and accurate. I’ve found the software very user friendly and any new users will find it easy to learn. Now that design and production are both using the same software and from the same database we are able to customise and systemise our operation from initial design through detailing and manufacture.