What Is the Vertical Positional in CABINET VISION? (And Why It Matters)

G’day! It’s Clayton from Planit Canada with another CABINET VISION tutorial. Welcome back. Today, I want to start with a simple question: what on earth is this “Vertical Positional” setting?

I still remember when I first started learning CABINET VISION. I would see “Vertical Positional” and have absolutely no idea what it meant. Since it did not seem to affect my everyday work in any obvious way, I just ignored it and told myself I would come back to it later. If you are anything like me back then, you might not really know what the Vertical Positional is or why it matters. This video is here to clear that up, and you will see that it is actually not complicated at all.

Let us click OK and add a wall elevation. I will place an upper cabinet: Door → Upper Right. When I place this cabinet on the wall, you will notice that it automatically attaches itself underneath the soffit. In this example, the soffit is at 12 inches, and the cabinet is sitting right under it.

Now, here is the part you might not know. If I right-click on a cabinet, choose “Save as”, then go into “Advanced”, there is a tab called “Placement”. In CABINET VISION, every single object can be saved with a specific vertical placement setting. That means that every time you go into the Object Catalog, grab that cabinet, and drop it onto a wall, it will attach itself at a height based on this vertical placement setting.

For base cabinets, that vertical placement is obviously set so that they sit on top of the floor. For upper cabinets, they are set to attach under the soffit. In this Placement tab, you will also see options called “Above positional” and “Below positional”. This is where the “Vertical Positional” comes into play.

Think of the vertical positional as an imaginary horizontal line on your wall. You can define the height of this line. When a cabinet is saved using a vertical placement that references this positional value, it will automatically attach itself to that imaginary line when you place it in the room.

For example, let us choose “Below positional” for this upper cabinet and save it as a “below positional” upper. Then we go back to the Object Catalog, open our uppers, and select the catalog where that setting was saved. When we place that cabinet, you will see it snaps to that imaginary positional line instead of under the soffit or on the floor.

If we go to Room → Room Layout, we can see that the Vertical Positional is set to 70. That means our imaginary line is at a height of 70, and the cabinet has been placed at that exact height.

Once you understand this, it can give you some ideas for how to build a custom catalog. You can create cabinets that reference different points on the wall through this Vertical Positional setting. That way, when you drop them into a room, they automatically go to the right height, which can make your design process much faster and more efficient.

Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you in the next video!