AC25 Cabinet Objects - Page 2

Benji_W · ‎2021-12-05

Obviously, the AC25 cabinet objects have been completely overhauled. I'm all for embracing a new tool and taking the time to learn how to use it. However, there seem to be some critical issues with the design of these new objects, which interfere with how some people choose to present their casework. A few of these issues might, in fact, be very easy to resolve in a future library update. I'll start with the easy ones:

Knob Positioning. This is a simple – albeit mind boggling – one (and perhaps easy to resolve). The knob position of the cabinet doors seem to originate from the bottom hinge side of the cabinet door in an XY grid. This was an unfortunately stupid idea. This means that if I have a completed 3d model of a kitchen (and thus, finished interior elevations), and the client asks to see what 42" tall wall cabinetss might look like...well, sure, I can change the dimension. And then I'll simply go into the int elevations and adjust the knob position of every single door. Just switch the knob macro's start position to be the opposite side, and make sure that it originates from the top/bottom of the door (in accordance to whether it is a wall cab or base cab), and no matter how I resize the cabinet, the knob will be in the correct location. And I won't need to create a favorite for every single conceivable cabinet design possible, just to make sure that the knobs are in the correct place in my model and interior elevations. It seriously wastes so much time to have to go back in and realign the knobs every time I change a cabinet's dimension.
3-Door Cabinets. They do exist. We still need them in some instances. And no, we cannot simply use three single-door cabinets. See item #6 for the reason why.
Face frames. I know, another annoying American here. I love the European look, but don't often get to employ it. A face frame design would be fantastic. Obviously, this might be a fairly big issue to implement, UNLESS...I do have a solution. "Front Panel Right Offset" and "Front Panel Left Offset" are two options given. They allow me to overhang the door/front panel out past the outer edge of the cabinet. I will never, ever use this function. But what I would use is the ability to shrink the panel size, in order to mimic a partial overlay cabinet. I could simply increase the "Carcass Thickness" to be 1 1/2" or so (as I would if I were trying to mimic a face-framed inset cabinet door), and then punch in a negative offset number (of course, negative numbers aren't allowed in this field. For reasons, I'm sure). Just add in a top, bottom, and center offset (in the case of double doors), and viola. I have a partial overlay cabinet that I can work with.
Double Drawers for Double Doors. It's far more common in our locale for double door cabinets to have two drawers (or false panels) that align above. Yet this is not an option. Again, for reasons.
Undermount Sinks. They don't show as undermount on the floor plans. Like they used to.
Floor Plan Representation. I don't know what happened here, but the floor plan display has some serious issues. All centering around the new inability to disable the cabinet and carcass hidden contour lines. This obviously causes an issue with figuring out how to correctly show a 3-door cabinet, and I'm certain that it causes many other problems and inconveniences that I'm yet to uncover. I get it, we're supposed to use the model view options – or set a custom 2D Detail Level – in order to hide the various hidden lines. This just seems like another new way to waste time. The old cabinet objects weren't nearly this functional, but at least they didn't necessitate us having to insert separate sink objects and linework in order to show the kitchen layout the way that we want to on the floor plans. They just worked. And no. Using a widely spaced dotted line is not a proper work around. Lot's of teeny, random little dots everywhere is not going to work. This software is far too expensive to be reliant on such old-school hacks.

Just want to ease some tension – these new objects ARE INDEED much more versatile and functional than the last iteration. They are an improvement. You guys simply missed a few critical things, which make much of your work nearly useless – as I (and others I'm sure) am seriously considering loading the old cabinet objects into my template to avoid having to take the extra time it would take to use the new cabinet objects. Though I would love to successfully employ the use of these ones.

Thanks,

-Ben

James B

Thanks for your feedback.

This overlaps with another wish - https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Wishlist/Cabinet-Feet-and-Handles-Archicad-26-review/idi-p/35547...

We plan to put attention into that wish for the kitchen cabinets at this stage.

Some improvements that also overlap this wish, were implemented in Archicad 26 - https://help.graphisoft.com/AC/26/INT/index.htm#t=_AC26_Help%2F005_NewFeatures%2F005_NewFeatures-16....

To help us to prioritise, it is better to have 1 request per wish - rather than merging many into one.

I've moved this to 'closed', but feel free to create new separate wishes for any of the remaining requests. Thanks for understanding.