Hi everyone!
We have been working on a big update to the design workflow in Easel Cabinetmaker to improve cabinet position. Respond to this thread if you are interested in early access and someone from our team will update your account.
Here are the highlights:
- Direct cabinet positioning with drag-and-drop for a more convenient layout process
- Collision avoidance for overlapping cabinets and corner intersections
- Inline measurement display to easily reference where each cabinet is located in the room
- Snapping to quickly align boxes with existing cabinets
Thatâs not all though! Check out the video and overview below to see all of the changes in this update.
If youâve been using Easel Cabinetmaker for a while, youâll notice one major difference:
The left mouse button no longer rotates the camera around the room. Instead, you will now use right-click to orbit (and shift/ctrl + right click to pan). Left-click will now control cabinet placement within the design through drag-and-drop.
Hereâs a more detailed breakdown of whatâs new in this update. Try it out in Easel Cabinetmaker to experience these improvements for yourself!
Adding Cabinets
- When new cabinets are added to the design, they will be aligned to the height and position of existing cabinets.
- Collision avoidance applies when adding new cabinets to the design. New cabinets will not be added in corners of the room if they would create a collision or door-interference with any existing cabinets near that corner.
- The add menu is now unified in the left panel for each wall instead of having distinct menus for upper and base cabinets.
Positioning Interactions
Drag-and-Drop
- When you click to select and drag a cabinet, the default direction of movement will be horizontal (left or right).
- To move vertically (up or down), hold the shift key when moving the cabinet.
- By default, Easel Cabinetmaker will prevent collisions or intersections of cabinets when positioning. To disable collision avoidance, hold the ctrl key while moving the cabinet.
- Snapping is also âonâ by default, meaning cabinets will easily snap to align with the faces of other cabinets in the design. To disable this behavior, hold the alt key on Windows or the option key on Mac while moving the cabinet.
Arrow Keys
- Using your keyboard arrow keys will move a selected cabinet 1â in whatever direction is specified.
- Holding shift while moving cabinets with keyboard arrow keys will move the selected cabinet 12â in whatever direction is specified.
- Holding the win key on Windows or the cmd key on Mac will move the selected cabinet by 1/16â.
Right Sidebar
- For additional fine-tuning of cabinet layouts, the panel on the right side of the Design tab will now show the editable coordinates of any selected cabinet relative to the wall.
Left Sidebar Menu
- To move a cabinet from one wall in the design to another, select the cabinet in the design and locate in the list of cabinets in the left panel. Click on the âŽ
menu button next to the cabinet name to move the selected cabinet between walls.
Inline Measurements
- Anytime a cabinet is selected, Easel Cabinetmaker will display the distances between each face of the cabinet and the nearest neighboring object or wall. These inline measurements remain visible when repositioning a cabinet.
- The inline measurements displayed in the design are not directly editable, meaning you arenât able to click into the field and enter a new value. We may introduce this functionality in a future update.
Camera Controls
- As mentioned above, left click no longer orbits (rotates) the camera. Instead, right click and drag is now used for orbit.
- To pan (left/right/up/down) the camera, hold shift or ctrl while right clicking and dragging in the desired direction.
- The mouse wheel is still used to zoom (dolly) the camera in and out of the scene. Additionally, holding shift while using the mouse wheel will zoom (dolly) to the cursor rather than the center point of the screen.
- There are home and zoom (dolly) in/out buttons in the bottom right corner of the 3D preview as before.
- The wall labels in the left sidebar and be clicked and will focus the camera on that wall
- Double click a cabinet will âfocusâ that cabinet by zooming to it and setting it as the camera target, hiding all other cabinets. The home button is replaced with a show all button which takes you back to the room view.
- Finally, youâll notice that all of the camera motions are now animated. This should help with spatial reference while moving about the scene
Left Sidebar
- Cabinets in the sidebar list are automatically sorted based on the left-to-right position per wall, but still grouped into the base and wall sections.
- Thereâs a new ⎠menu for cabinets in the sidebar. The rename and delete options are under this menu now, along with the new move to wall option mentioned above.
Islands
- Thereâs a new section for islands which get a dedicated ⎠menu
- The island orientation can be toggled from left/right to front/back depending on the desired layout of the room
- Islands can be deleted view the menu if you arenât using them
- For projects without islands, this section is replaced with an âadd islandâ button.