Mastering Layers in CABINET VISION: Make Your Drawings Work for You

G’day! How’s it going? Welcome to another CABINET VISION tutorial.
I’m Clayton and this is the Planit Canada YouTube Channel.

Today, let’s talk about layers. Layers are a fantastic tool in CABINET VISION, which allow us to display as much or as little information in our projects as we would like.

So for instance, when I’m creating drawings for my factory, often they’re going to be a bit more technical, a bit more detailed and highlight a lot more of the practical functionality that needs to be constructed in the factory.

Whereas when I’m creating drawings for my clients, they’re maybe a bit simpler. They’re probably highlighting a lot more of the beautiful features of the kitchen and they don’t need to show as much of the information as the factory.

So what we can do is create different layers that will hide and show different features of our project for our specific needs.

And just to give you an example for how layers work: up here in the toolbar is where all of our layers are. My default install of CABINET VISION has come with these four: Architectural, Engineering, Dark Mode and Countertops.

We don’t have to use them. We can make copies of them and modify them, or we could completely change them if we want. This is very much a personal preference kind of thing.

But one of the cool layers I like to use is the countertops layer.

Countertops Layer

When I click on countertops layer, you’ll see that CABINET VISION now is hiding a lot of the different information in my project.

It hasn’t deleted it, it hasn’t removed it, it’s just hidden all of that additional information that this layer is supposed to hide.

What’s left are my walls and my countertops.

So that now, if I wanted to, I could right-click, Send to Drawing, click on Drawing, make a new sheet. Maybe I’ll add my title block in as well. Click OK, and I can add in that plan view that just shows my countertops according to that layer.

So this could be very useful if I need to order the countertops, or if I need to provide this information to the factory or the installer.

Very quickly, I was able to create that information for that drawing.

Editing Layers

So if we go back to plan, let’s talk about how we can modify and edit the layers and how they kind of work.

If I click on the button here with these three little layers, you’ll see that all of my layer schedules pop-up as a list. I can make copies of pre-existing layers or create totally new ones.

I’m going to make a copy of my Architectural layer. Sorry, I’ll make a copy of that first. We’ll call this one Test.

And then Edit, and then what pops-up is a list of all the different modifications I can make to this layer.

So you will notice that in my countertops layer it had hidden a lot of different objects, a lot of different lines in that project, and only conserved a few.

This comes down to these two buttons here: the light bulb and the pencil.

When I click on the light bulb and when I turn it off, I’m telling CABINET VISION you need to hide in this layer— in this case, the walls—when I’m viewing in my different views this object.

So right now, if I were to save this, my plan and elevation view would hide my walls. I would not be able to see them. They’re there, I just can’t see them.

When I click on the pencil, it’s the exact same principle except for our drawings. We can hide whether they appear or don’t appear in our drawings as well.

So I can turn them on. And if I wanted to, I could click on the little color next to it, and I could change what colored lines are being used to display this information.

And it’s the exact same principle for all the different features you see here.

I can also click on the lines here and even change the kinds of lines that represent this information and the thickness of it.

So we’re really talking about the aesthetics of this information and how it’s presented in CABINET VISION. This becomes personal preference; you can make it whatever you would like.

But you’ll notice in this list as well, we have some of these options in bold. This is telling me that there is an additional feature that I can control or modify.

So let’s double-click on the dimensions and let’s talk about some of the settings here because I think they could be very useful to you.

On the right-hand side, you see the different line dimensions. If I click on, say, my Base Assemblies and Edit, CABINET VISION will allow me to control what dimensions appear for what information.

So if, for instance, I wanted to add my assembly centers to this layer, I just click on this little box, and you’ll see it’s added my assembly centers to the little diagram.

That means I can add or remove as many different dimensions, automatic dimensions, as I would like.

It’s the exact same principle for your uppers. And for instance if I change this to wall to a wall end…

You can also control, say, how the dimensions appear on each end. So this could be very useful if you’ve noticed in your layers it’s not showing as many dimensions, as much information as you need.

On the left-hand side here, you can also control just how the actual information is presented.

So, for instance, if I click on these three dots, you’ll see if I click on Edit, I can now start controlling things like the font, the height, is it bold, is it not bold, where is it placed, all of that information as well.

Honestly, the best advice I can give you is: if there is something you would like to see changed in your layers, make a copy of a layer that you have available, go have a play around with it, change or remove some of the settings, or try and add them, and try and make your layers really suit you and your CABINET VISION.

Views and Display

And now let’s just briefly touch on this left-hand column here. This helps you appreciate that you can also control what information is displayed according to the different views.

So the information I see in my plan view doesn’t necessarily mean I’m hiding that same information from my elevation view.

To just give you an example of that, the way my countertops layer is set up means that when I click on elevation, I still can see all of my elevation like normal.

It’s just from the plan view that it hides all those cabinets.

So if we go back, and go Edit, you can also control then how the information’s presented on all the other different views in CABINET VISION.

And even on the different report sheets that we can generate, like the assembly sheet, the part or plan sheet.

Reports

And if you’re not familiar with what these reports are, I’ll just quickly touch on them. It could depend on what modules you’ve got configured with your CABINET VISION.

But if I click on Reports, I’ve got on the left-hand side here the ability to generate these different sheets or specialty drawings.

Let’s say I click on Assembly Sheet here, and I’m going to just generate… Let’s generate the assembly sheet for him, and we’ll send it to drawing. That’s fine.

Click on Drawing and now I should have that additional sheet that has all the information for this cabinet.

I can, from my layer, control how this information is presented when I’m using that layer.

Conclusion

Hopefully that’s giving you a good broad overview of how the layers work in CABINET VISION and how you can make all the necessary modifications that you’d like to make.

If there’s anything though that you’re still wondering—how do I actually do this in my layers, how do I change this setting—please leave us that question in the comments below and we’ll happily help answer that for you.

Otherwise, we’ll see you in the next video.