The build guide

Opening the guide

Prefer watching? The video From cut list to build manual shows what the guide gives you.

At the top of the cabinet designer sits the button Build manual, next to What do I need. It builds a PDF file and puts it in your downloads folder. The document is calculated entirely from your design: every dimension, every hole and every step belongs to the cabinet on your screen. It is laid out for A4 and the drawings are vectors, so a drilling plan stays sharp however far you zoom in. Give it a moment on a large cabinet: the wardrobe in our example runs to 54 pages. If the file fails, you get the guide as a web page instead and can print from there.

A shallow cabinet uses short blocks between the front and rear plinth rails. The app explains why. The crosscut list, 3D, STEP and assembly guide use the same dimensions. The guide also explains cutting and gluing this compact frame. The screw length for the plinth fascia follows the panel thickness and the actual front rail thickness; the supplies list uses the same length. If a shelf lacks support under the slope, add a partition underneath or lower the shelf until both sides are supported. The design is not changed automatically.

If a shelf lacks support under the slope, a drawer box does not fully meet its sloping front, or a door is too thin for the calculated hinge cup, the download contains only a stop notice. It has no cut list, drilling plans or assembly steps. Adjust the design and generate the guide again before continuing the build. Do not attach a moving pull-out to the wall; secure the fixed outer cabinet against tipping.

In a row of cabinets every cabinet gets its own guide: first select the cabinet (its letter), then open the button. A pharmacy pull-out is itself a cabinet in the row, but it belongs in the guide of the cabinet around it; select the pull-out and open the button, and you get that guide too. The pull-out is fully included: its cut list, hardware, drilling plans and assembly steps, right before the step in which it slides into the cabinet. You fit its front on the workbench, and then it goes in front and all. The last chapter Cabinet row describes how to join the cabinets. The step with the mounting strips carries a close-up of the slide system, built the way the cabinet designer draws it: from the front a section through one slide, with the cabinet's mounting strip on the compartment floor, the cabinet member of the lower slide upright against it, the pull-out's own strip beside it and the offset underneath; from the side the same parts in depth. The lower slide carries the load, the upper one lies flat under the part above and only keeps the pull-out straight. The height in that close-up is not to scale, so the parts stay large enough to read.

Assembly and positioning

Stand the cabinet up takes place in the assembly area. Then fit the shelves, fronts and hardware. Position and secure follows assembly: move the cabinet to its final position, level it and secure it. Adjustable feet are checked there before fitting the separate plinth. Hang a wall cabinet as a light carcass first, then fit its shelves, drawers and fronts.

What is in it

The cover carries the logo with the web address where you made the guide, the cabinet as a drawing and, at the bottom, a title block like the one on a workshop drawing: project, date, overall size, material, the number of parts and assembly steps, and the number of sheets (that last one only in the PDF file). Every sheet has the logo mark and project name at the top and the web address with the sheet number at the bottom, for example sheet 3 of 45. That way loose pages on the workbench go back in order.

To the right of the title block there is a QR code with Scan to open this design below it. Scan it with your phone and the app opens with your design: the cabinet, or the whole row of cabinets, with the cut list and the sheets that follow from it. That way you can bring the design back up at the workbench, or hand the printout to someone else. If the project is already on your device or in your account, the scan opens that project instead of making a copy; if it has changed since the printout, the app says so and Open the manual's version opens the printed version as a copy. The design is contained entirely in the code itself; nothing is stored on a server and nobody can look at it through us. Sizes you changed by hand in the cut list do not come along, because the cut list is derived again from the cabinet. For a large design, for example a corner cabinet with two neighbouring cabinets, the code gets bigger so it stays scannable.

Materials and cut list

The same numbers as in the cut list and the cutting plan, with size, thickness, material, quantity and grain direction. Below it Hardware (the same count as in What do I need) and Screws, glue and edge banding: the screws, mounting plates, glue and the metres of edge banding the steps need together.

Tools

Derived from what your cabinet needs: a 15 mm Forstner bit is listed only when there are cams, a drilling jig only with a hole line, an iron only with edge banding. Below the list, each drilling jig (hole line, cup hinge, cams, dowels) has a short method with the dimensions of your cabinet and a link to the manufacturer of a common jig. Then Working safely, five fixed rules.

Joints and hardware: how they work

The same drawings as behind the i-buttons in the app: how a cam works, where the shelf support sits, the three kinds of cup hinge, the hole line and the slide dimensions of the first drawer. Read this first if the words are new to you.

Drilling plan per part

For each part a view with all holes: sides seen from the inside, bottom, top and shelves upside down (the cam housings go into the underside), dividers on their left face, doors from the back, drawer sides from the outside. If something goes on both sides of a panel, each side gets its own drawing: a top view next to the bottom view, a right face next to the left face. Never dashed through the panel. For a hole line in a divider, the legend names the face in that drawing; its count applies only to that face and may differ on the other side. Bottom right there is a small locator drawing: the whole cabinet without fronts, with this exact part filled in and pulled a little towards you, the dashed outline where it belongs. That is needed because the cut-list number is often not unique: three shelves numbered 12 differ only in their height. Below it says which assembly step the part returns in. Dimensions are given as dimension lines along the edges; the legend gives diameter and depth per kind of hole. Every kind of hole has its own shape and size, so a Ø 5 shelf-pin hole, a Ø 8 dowel hole, a Ø 15 cam housing and a Ø 35 hinge cup never look alike on the sheet; the legend shows those same shapes. Large holes are drawn to scale, small ones slightly larger than scale, otherwise they are invisible on paper. Grooves and rebates appear as a band. See Common dimensions for the source of those figures.

Assembly

Step by step, with a drawing per step: the new part in ochre, slightly out of place with an arrow and a dashed line to where it goes; the part it is fixed to dark grey, the rest of what is already built light grey. When many parts go in at once, they are shown in ochre in their place. The arrow always points the way the dowels and cam bolts stick out, because that is the only direction the part can go in. The series starts with one step per panel that carries hardware: you screw the drawer slides, the mounting plates and the rail holders on while the part is still flat on the bench, and for a pharmacy pull-out the mounting strips with the lower slides onto the bottom and the upper slides under the part above. Fronts also go onto their drawer or pull-out on the bench, before it goes into the cabinet. If a divider carries hardware on both faces it gets two steps, each with that face up. After that you build the carcass lying down (that is how the drawings show it), then stand the cabinet up for further assembly. With Adjustable legs with removable plinth, attach the blocks and legs to the supported carcass lying down before lifting it upright. A cabinet with dividers lies on its front rather than flat: every part then stands on edge and stays put by itself, and the back faces up so the back panel can simply go on afterwards. That saves one tilt. The order of the carcass is worked out: every part goes onto all its dowels and bolts at once in one straight movement, and never slides past the protruding bolts of a part that is already in place. Where a loose part cannot go in like that, you first put a sub-assembly together on the workbench, for instance two shelves with the small divider between them, and slide that whole into place in one movement. Only where no straight way exists in any order does a confirmat screw go in, driven after placing. Every fixed shelf and every divider gets its own step, and the drawing shows only what is actually fastened at that point: a part still to come is not drawn in place. Below each step is the hardware of that step and, for fronts, the position of each front.

Adjusting and checking

The three adjustment screws of a cup hinge, drawers that run skew, the diagonals and the anti-tip fixing. Only the points that apply to your cabinet. For a downward flap, check that it is level when open. The final check only asks for a flush surface with the panel below when all downward flaps are calculated to be at that height. An inset flap can sit higher when open; do not adjust it to the height of the panel below.

What to watch out for

First attach blocks and legs to the carcass, then position and level it, then fit the plinth. Leg mounting holes: drill on site. Mounting blocks and plinth clips have no CNC drilling. Leg and block positions are schematic, not an exact drilling profile. Use the supplied manufacturer documentation for installation.

The guide follows your choices in the app. A shelf on pins gets support holes, a fixed shelf cams or dowels; a drawer with its own false front gets screw holes for the front, a drawer whose front is the front of the box gets dowels; a back panel in a groove or rebate gets a slot in sides, bottom and top. If something does not match what you want to build, change it in the design and open the guide again; the document itself cannot be edited.

Two things are deliberately not in the hardware list of the app but are in the guide: the screws and dowels of drawer boxes, and the cams for a shelf on pins that carries a divider (the guide then says to buy them extra). The frame of a plinth is made of battens and is not in the cut list; the step gives size and number.