Design furniture around columns

Building a cabinet around a column or pillar requires a lot of extra time and effort if you are doing it manually.

Polyboard has a very useful command that makes integrating pillars and columns fast and easy. This feature is called Unboxing. This is a rather obscure name for a very down to earth and practical command that allows you to cut off corners of cabinets so they can fit perfectly into different shaped walls.

Unboxing is a very powerful feature that makes the back and sides of a piece of furniture move around any rectangular obstacle or structural element such as pipework and columns.

It’s very simple to use, but it can save hours of tedious designing and drafting.

Here’s a short video that shows you how this feature works:

Here’s another video showing you the same feature in practice when designing a cabinet for a corner of a room that has different columns and boxes.

It explains how to use the project mode window coupled with the cabinet editing window to make sure your design fits the walls like a glove.

Once you have added a cabinet, you open the editing mode and use Polyboard’s measuring tool to measure the width and height of the column or obstacle that you need to design your cabinet around. Then open the Unboxing command from the Quick Design toolbar and specify the size of the cut out according to the size of column you have just measured.

You also need to tell Polyboard which panels you want it to cut around – front or back, left or right, top or bottom. Once you’ve saved these changes, Polyboard builds the cut outs of the cabinet boards automatically according to the details you’ve entered in Manufacturing Methods.

You can then go into 3D mode to see what the cabinet looks like and whether the measurements are correct. All changes are automatically applied to the cut list and CNC files.

If you have any question or remarks don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.

Please also check out the other furniture design software resources on our website.

Click here for an overview of Polyboard, with options to buy or use for free in conjunction with a Premium Support subscription.