Overview

Cabybara turns a SketchUp model into a fabrication package: parametric cabinets, a priced quote for the customer, nested sheets for the CNC, and labels for the shop floor.

This page is the way in. It explains the order you work in, then links every reference section. New to Cabybara? The Learn course installs the plugin, pairs this computer and builds a first kitchen step by step.

How a job flows

1. Set up your stock. The Stock Catalog holds the sheets and hardware you actually buy: thickness, grain, price and margin. Pricing, nesting and the production report all read it, so it comes first. Set a default stock per part role once, and the cabinet dialog opens with those stocks already chosen for you every time.

2. Generate cabinets. Fourteen cabinet types, each parametric. You do not model panels: you set sizes, doors, drawers and materials, and the generator builds the parts. Every panel it creates already carries what production needs later: its part type, its inside/outside face, its grain, and its stock wherever the dialog had one set for that role.

Build the room to work against with the Kitchen Layout - a floor, walls and guide lines at cabinet and countertop heights to snap against as you place cabinets. For one-off parts, use Create Panel or the Decor Sculptor.

3. Adjust what the generator could not know. A family of hover tools paints changes straight onto the model: stock, and the panel tools for grain, face and production notes. The Face Engraver sits alongside them and works differently: you hover to select faces, and its dialog cuts them. These tools are also how you adopt geometry you modelled yourself: give a plain component a stock and Cabybara treats it as a panel from then on.

This is the step that decides what reaches production. A panel with no stock is invisible to nesting and carries no price.

4. Price it, in front of the customer. The Pricing Overlay puts live prices on the model: hover a part for its price and the math behind it, hold Shift for a price map of the whole job with a grand total. Change a rate in the Stock Catalog while it is open and the prices refresh. When the customer agrees, Customer Pricing prints the quotation.

5. Nest. Nesting packs the parts onto sheets, one run per stock, respecting grain and the offcuts you actually have. Review and fix the result by hand in the manual editor if you want to.

6. Cut, label, assemble. Export a DXF per sheet for your CAM software, print the sheet layouts, and print labels for the parts. The Production Report is the cut list and shopping list for the whole job.

Worth knowing

• Nest onto the offcuts you already have. Sheet sizes are yours to define, each with its own grain and its own quantity. Enter the three half-sheets in the corner of the workshop and the packer will use them and stop at three, instead of assuming an endless supply of full sheets.
• The CNC operator gets a picture and the labels. Print each nested sheet as a drawing of its parts, and print that sheet's labels with it. When the machine finishes cutting, the operator matches label to part on the sheet in front of them, so parts arrive at assembly already identified.
• Fabrication data rides on the panel. Face, grain, engraving and shop notes are stored on the part itself, so they survive into the DXF, the labels and the cut list rather than living in someone's head.
• Copies stay honest. By default, copying a cabinet gives it its own name and its own panels, so editing one does not silently change the other.

Reference

• Cabinet Generation - the fourteen cabinet types and every field in the dialog.
• Kitchen Layout - the room shell: floor, walls and guide lines to place cabinets against.
• Standalone Panels - Create Panel, for parts that are not part of a cabinet.
• Decor Sculptor - decorative wave and pattern pieces.
• Stock Management - the Stock Catalog and the Stock Painter.
• Materials - the .skm library, the Materials Manager and the Materials Painter.
• Panel Tools - grain, face, engraving and production notes.
• Components Manager - every part in the model in one table, with bulk edits and problem filters. It also covers the Make Selection Unique command.
• Pricing - how costs are computed, the live overlay and the customer quotation.
• Nesting - sheet packing and its settings, the manual editor, DXF export and sheet printing.
• Labels - the label designer, tokens and printing.
• Production Report - cut lists, hardware and per-cabinet breakdowns.
• Settings - what each setting changes and where the concept is documented.
• Licensing - what your subscription controls, the license window and its statuses, working offline, and moving to another computer.