If you need to change the material of an element in a cabinet or other piece of furniture you can select each part and change it’s material. But if you want to change the material of a type of part, for instance all the shelves, then it’s far quicker to use a Manufacturing Method.

We take a look here at the Materials Sub-Method in Polyboard.

Video Transcription

This is a short video to show you how to use a Manufacturing Sub-Method to change all the materials of your furniture in one go.

Here we have a cabinet which is designed as a modern style low buffet in a yellow style MDF material. We will change the whole style of the cabinet by changing the materials of the different elements without having to go through each element in turn and make the changes.

buffet style cabinet in mdf

The easy way to do these kind of global operations in Polyboard is to use Manufacturing Methods which are very powerful.

manufacturing methods menu

Within Manufacturing Methods, each Method that is listed contains lots of Sub-Methods. Here, where we are working with a unique piece of furniture, it can often be easier to change a Sub-Method and apply it to the furniture as we go rather than to change the whole Manufacturing Method.

manufacturing sub-methods

In this case, we only want to change the material, but not the way the boards are assembled or the hardware for example. So, we would go into Sub-Methods > Materials Style from the Libraries menu, and we’ll be able to change the different materials.

materials style sub-method

Already in this particular Sub-Method we have Panels and Drawer materials. We’ll delete the Drawers method, then click on All Panels.

delete drawer materials

We’ll change the settings from MDF to Mahogany, click ‘OK’ and apply and the entire cabinet has been changed.

change all panels material
ok and apply material

Here’s the cabinet in mahogany.

cabinet now in mahogany

We can go further and click on the ‘+’ to Add a Parameter Material.

click on plus sign

We can now choose elements of the furniture and specify a material for each. For instance, we can change the top to 30 mm beach, and all the shelves to glass.

top in oak
shelves in glass

Click ‘OK’ and we apply it to our cabinet.

2 new elements to sub method

Here’s the finished cabinet with its new materials.

finished cabinet with new materials

Click here for our full Polyboard tutorial series.

Thanks for watching.

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