Alternate Form Layout Increases Productivity in Cabinet Design Software

As I work with users in online design sessions three things (at least) are happening. First by hearing the questions and watching how people use the various forms of the SketchList 3D woodworking software, I get a whole new appreciation of what’s good and what can be better in the product. Second seeing the flow or process of how people design their projects – I have been developing ideas of better — or at least different – methods to approach design. Finally I have been keeping a list of what I think of as quick tips. Over the next weeks or months maybe, I will be making videos explaining these quick tips and showing how to do them. Some of them may just be ideas – perhaps out side the box ideas – but I would like to think that they are either useful in themselves or because they might get you to create your own ‘quick tip’.

One Quick Tip is to experiment with the types of layout of your SketchList 3D on the computer screen. (Related to this is to either get a big monitor screen – mine is 28 inches – plug in an additional monitor to your laptop – or optimally both!).

I did a video overview of the user interface of SketchList 3D in which I put four of my most used forms / spreadsheets on the same screen. Because I wanted to show the interaction between the forms – and my video capture software works best on only one screen I arranged the forms within SketchList 3D the way I wanted.    Which is like this…

This is easy enough to do in our furniture design software because the areas of the main form have the ability  to be moved around (docked) to different parts of the screen.  You can even move and use a form on another screen!

It can take a bit of experimenting since sometimes the forms pop into a space you didn’t intend.  That’s OK – just move it again.  You can also re-size the forms by putting the cursor on the form edge and when the little arrows appear moving the edge to where you want it.

The advantage is that you can see more of your project data at one time without clicking on different windows.  This is a real speed up in the design of your furniture or cabinet projects.