Creating kitchen cabinets with Fusion 360 Part 3 - the drawers

Thanks for clicking on the video. This is part three in the series on using Fusion 360 to create a kitchen cabinet using parametric modeling and going from designing Fusion 360 ultimately to cutting this out. So if you haven't already, which most of you haven't, subscribe please to the video and give it a like and if you even care to, get the notification icon going and you will be able to see the future videos in this series as we move forward and ultimately cut and assemble this cabinet. In part one, we entered all the parameters that we needed, we've added a few as we went And in part two, we created the carcass as you see it here. And now in this third part, we're going to create the drawers. This is a 36 inch cabinet, so it's going to have two drawers. So we're going to create those, maintaining our theme of parametric modeling so it can be altered at any time in the future to whatever you need it to be. And in future videos, we're going to do the doors and the drawer fronts and we will then modify it to a different size cabinet or to an upper cabinet or whatever we need. The goal is to be able to use this single file and modify it to make an entire kitchen. If I do videos to make the entire kitchen, I don't know, but certainly we'll cut and assemble at least one cabinet so you can see start to finish how it goes. So moving forward here, in order to support the drawers, I will have drawer slides on the sides of the drawers. I could do an undermount slide, but I prefer to do the side mount drawer slide. So I need a center drawer support right down the middle of the cabinet. So that's what we're going to do next. So I'm going to turn off everything that I don't need, which is pretty much everything. I don't need the side panels. I will need this. I don't need the nailers. I will need the top back, the top front. I don't need the bottom, the back, the toe stretcher, and I will need these. So I will be using these, but not right now. So there's the back. Actually, before we go any farther, let's turn everything back on. Something that I have not been doing and I should do a better job of is assemblies, joints. Right now, when you're designing this, you could mistakenly move a panel, and you could move it in such a small amount that you might not notice it, and that could really screw you up in the future. It's screwed me up in the past. So something I need to do better at is creating joints. My cabinet's going to be held together with pocket screws. Pocket screws on the underside of this, on the underside of this, on here. Everything's going to be pocket screws. So we should really, as we go, create joints so nothing can move. So in order to create joints, the first thing we're going to do is select this left side panel. This is kind of our baseline. Everything's come off this in terms of design of the cabinet. We're going to ground it. All that means is I can't move it now. It's grounded. It's like our anchor. And then from there, we're going to create joints. So this is built already the way I want it. So I can do an as-built joint. All that means is we're going to make a joint just as it's built right now. So I'll select my grounded anchor and the back, and that creates a joint. So now the back is jointed to the left side panel. I can't move the back. I can move this panel if I want because I haven't made the joint yet. So we'll go ahead and continue making the joints. And all I'm doing here is using the right mouse button, clicking and dragging straight up, and that repeats the previous action that you did. So I would recommend you learn all the shortcuts you can to make this all go faster. It'll go much faster if you know the shortcuts. All right. That's locked, locked, locked. Everything's locked but the back nailers. All right. Now that everything's locked in place, you can't accidentally move it, which could mess you up in the future. So we're going to turn off everything. Everything we don't need, we need the back. We'll turn off everything else. All right. And we're going to create a new sketch. Whoops. On the front surface of the back panel. And we're just going to draw our rectangle out. And now this piece is going to be right up to the top. Go linear. And it's going to be made out of the same material that the drawers are made out of. So drawer material, which is half inch. It doesn't need to be any heavier than that. It's just going to carry, I guess, half the weight of either drawer. So the center, I don't know what you call it. Both drawers are going to be supported by it. But I mean, half inch is one. So in terms of how tall it is, it's going to be drawer front tall. That is, that way every time we go and we change the depth of the drawer, this will change with it. Let's see what else. We could also do drawer depth if we wanted to. See what that looks like. And we want it to be right dead center in the middle of the cabinet. And since our back panel is centered in the cabinet, we know that if we center this board in the middle of the back panel, it will be centered in the middle of the cabinet. So we go up here. We hit midpoint. And we select that line. And then we select the cabinet line. And there it moves over. It all turns black. Again, black means that it's fully constrained. It's fully dimensioned and located. So we'll finish that sketch. And we're going to extrude that board out. So now we need to turn on those other boards that we were talking about. So the top back, the top front, and the drawer bottom divider. And we're going to... Nope. I don't want that. Extrude. And we're going to extrude it out. We're going to make a new body. And we're going to extrude it out to the front of the cabinet. Hit OK. All right, so it's not tall enough. My drawer depth is a parameter that I made. I don't know if I've even used it yet. I don't know if I even will use it. But I know that this board is set down by the parameter drawer front. So what we can do is go back into that sketch. You can go in here and you can double-click on the sketch here. Or you can double-click on it in the timeline. So we'll go back into that sketch. Double-click on that parameter. And we're going to do drawer front. There we go, that's better. Finish. And now you can see it is taller. So if you notice, there's an issue. It is interfering with the two top stretchers and this front drawer divider. I could have made this board so it fit in between these two. But it's being cut on a CNC machine and I can do what I want. So I'm going to notch it out for these other boards. Not that it makes it any more rigid, but I think it's faster to design it the way I've done it. All I had to do was draw this one square and dimension it out. Rather than try to figure out where these are. And it's not hard to do. It's not hard to do, but I like to do it this way because, like I said, I've got a CNC machine and I can do what I want. So I'm going to. So what we're going to do, and it's a good demonstration to show you how to do this if you're not aware. So this is the body. This is the component that we want to change. So we're going to go to modify, which makes sense. And then we're going to go to combine, which does not make sense. But inside of the combine tool are more operations, more tools that you can use. So this is what we want to change. This is called the target body. It's the target of the change. And then we're going to select a tool body. And I always think of it like a form tool on your lathe. You have the tool that is the shape you want and you plunge it into your material that you're cutting and you get the shape of the form tool. So infusion, you can select multiple form tools. So we'll select this back one and you can see it gives you a little preview of what it's going to do. We'll select this front one and this bottom one. The operation is cut. We're going to cut out where these boards intersect. And we want to make sure you select keep tools. Keep tools means that you won't lose these boards. Otherwise, fusion would delete these boards. And hit OK. So now it doesn't interfere. We have notches to fit all those boards. I like it because it also kind of helps you align. Everything is going to be kind of like self-aligning, self-squaring, if that makes sense. There we go. Alright, so we're going to turn everything back on and see what we got. So there's our divider. Again, it's going to be pocket holes or maybe screw and brad nails. I haven't decided. Alright, so now we're going to make the drawers. The drawers kind of get a little complicated, but I like to keep my drawers very simple. There's no finger joints. There's no dovetail joints. They are just all butt joints. They're going to be put together with pocket holes. Very simple. Very robust. You do not need a fully rabbeted drawer with a dadoed bottom to hold your forks. You just don't. And while that might look nice, no one cares. They're going to throw a little drawer organizer in there, and that is the last they're going to see at the bottom of their drawer. Until they're ripping your cabinet out to put a new one in. So I do not find it worth the time and effort to go through a complicated drawer build for my own vanity. So I'm going to show you how I do it. Fast. Simple. Easy. Strong. Alright, so to do this we're going to need a couple of new sketches, and we're going to use a couple more construction planes. You saw me use construction planes in video two. We're going to use them a little bit more here. So we're going to turn off everything. Let's see. We're going to turn off everything but the left panel and this center divider. And while we're at it, we're going to turn this into a component and name it. Center drawer divider. Alright, turn off everything. There we go. This, this, this. Alright. So the first thing I'm going to do is make a couple construction planes. And now they are going, what I'm trying to accomplish here is I need to build my drawer. I need to create my first drawer panel offset from this. It's not going to be built right on the left side of the panel or the inside of the cabinet. There needs to be room for the drawer slide. And if you recall in video one, we already added a parameter for the thickness of the drawer slide. We put in half an inch and that can be changed later to exactly what your drawer slide is. Most of them are half an inch, but some could be different. So what we want to do is create something called an offset plane. What this allows you to do is to select a face and then create a plane that is offset from that face. So in our case, it's going to be offset the thickness of a drawer slide. And now if we zoom in, you can see that that plane is offset the thickness of the drawer slide. And it's offset parametrically as well. If I change that parameter drawer slide, it will change where this plane is located in relationship to the inside of the cabinet. So we're going to do another offset plane on this one. And same thing, drawer slide. There you go. Now we're going to turn this off. We're going to turn this center divider off. And we're going to turn that plane off. And we're going to work just on this. So what we're going to do is create a new sketch. And we're going to create that sketch on this offset plane that we just created. And there you go. So now what we have is our new sketch. And we're looking through the transparent sketch and we can see the inside of the panel, the left panel. If we rotate this, you will be able to see that my sketch is in fact offset. So we have some geometry on this panel that we want on our sketch. And that is in sketch one. The very first sketch we did when we drew out everything for the carcass. We drew in the top stretchers, the nailers, the dado, this drawer divider. It's all there. We want to reference that information on our new sketch. In order to do that, we need to transfer it onto our sketch. Fusion provides us a way to do that. So we can go to create, we can go to project, include, and we're going to select project or P on your keyboard. What this does is it allows us to select geometry, faces, features, and project that onto our current sketch. So we are going to go ahead and you just go around and you click everything you want. So I want the top of the panel, the front of it. I want this information here, the drawer divider. I want the top and I want the front of the back dado. That's the information I want. That is going to allow me to locate my drawer panel in the right location. So hit okay. Alright, so there we go. Now we have that information on our active sketch. Alright, so we're going to draw our drawer panel. So right there, draw. It's an arbitrary square. It doesn't matter because again, with parametric modeling, everything you do is referenced against something you've done previous. That way, whenever you change something upstream, it will, everything downstream gets updated. If I were to just draw this drawer and choose my dimensions, if I were to change something like the depth of the cabinet, my drawer would not update. So you need to, everything is referenced from something else. So in this case, I want the top of my drawer to be a half an inch below the top stretchers. Ah, no, I changed my mind, quarter inch below. I want the back of my drawer to be, when fully closed, a half an inch from the back of the cabinet. This is arbitrary. I'm making it up. You can change it later, but I don't know. Just do what you think is right. Ah, let's see. I want the front of the drawer collinear with the front of the carcass. This is a frameless cabinet. It's not a European style cabinet. A frameless cabinet just means there's no face frame, but my doors and my drawer fronts will still be in front of the cabinet. So when the drawer is fully closed, the drawer front will rest on the front of the carcass, same as the doors. Ah, in a European style cabinet, your, everything is flush. Your drawer fronts sit inside the carcass and your doors sit inside the carcass. Mine do not do that, so I want the drawer, when fully closed, to be flush with the front of the carcass. And on, in front of that will be a drawer front. So we make it collinear with the front of the carcass. Now, like I said earlier, these drawers, the bottom is just going to be screwed or nailed and glued onto the bottom of the drawer. Or perhaps pocket holes. Ah, that will be plenty strong. So, I want the bottom of my drawer to be a quarter inch above the divider. Now this is the side panel, and my bottom, drawer bottom, will be underneath that. I'm making my drawer bottom with the same drawer material that I'm making the rest of the drawer out of, which in this case is going to be half inch plywood. So I have a quarter inch plus drawer material. And what that does is it allows me room to add the bottom of my drawer above, when it's all assembled, the bottom of my drawer will be a quarter inch above the drawer divider stretcher thing. Alright, so there we go. We've got one side of our drawer done. So we can finish sketch, and we can extrude this out. You can hit the extrude button up here. You can go to create, extrude, or you can just hit E on your keyboard. Again, learn the shortcuts, especially the keyboard shortcuts. Because your fingers will know what to do before your brain has a chance to tell. So we want to do a new component, and we want to extrude it out drawer material. And there we go, we have our first panel, and it is offset from the inside of the cabinet by the thickness of our drawer slide. So now, what we want to do is turn on the center divider and that plane. Because we do not, uh, let's see, okay. We don't need to draw everything twice or four times. If you've drawn something once, you can use, uh, you can use mirrors and you can use patterns to make your other, to duplicate it. So here it is. I have it. I have this plane and this plane, which represents the width of the drawers. So I need, I'm going to make another plane, this time a mid plane, between these two offset planes, which again represent the width of the drawer. So this plane now is perfectly centered in the middle of the drawer. So, if I select this board, and I go to create, mirror. I'm going to select the, I want a component, since that's what this panel, this board is, is a component. Select the mirror plane, and hit okay, and now I have the other panel done for me. I didn't have to spend any time drawing it all. So now we're going to turn off these construction planes. And we're going to turn off, let's see, so we want to make sure we're labeling everything. So what I like to do is, especially with drawers, up until now, everything I've made has been a single board. And that single board has been a component of the cabinet, the 36 inch cabinet. The drawer, however, is a single component of the cabinet, but it is made up by five individual drawer, or individual boards. So what I like to do is go up here, hit new component, that gives me down here, and make it drawer. And then I put these inside of it. And now, in Fusion, you can activate or deactivate different components. So if I activate the main component, the main item, 36 inch base, everything is activated. I can see everything. When we're manufacturing, or when we're coming up with this drawer, I want to just activate the drawer. That way, everything I make in the drawer, every new body, every new component, will be inside the drawer component. Hopefully that makes sense. It should make sense in a few minutes. So what we're going to do is we're going to turn that off. So all we can see is our, turn off this sketch number once. Now all we can see is the panel of the drawer. And we're going to create a new sketch. You can go up here and hit create new sketch, or you can right click on the surface that you want to create a sketch on. And there we go. So we're going to draw out the front of the drawer, and the back of the drawer. And the front of the drawer will be collinear with the top of the panel. On the front, so it will be flush with the front. It'll be the same height. And it's going to be the thickness of our drawer material. Done. We'll do the same thing on this side. Make it the same height. Make it the same. Make it flush with the front. And make it the same material. And when I do that, to dimension the thickness of the board, I'm hitting D on the keyboard. Or D for dimension. And selecting the two lines, this line and this line. Which lets me type in the name of the parameter. Okay, so now that that's done, we can finish the sketch. And we are going to turn back on our other board. We're going to go to extrude, or E for extrude. Select the two boards we want to extrude. Pull them out. Make them new components or new bodies, it doesn't really matter. They're all inside of the drawer component. Go to two object, which is going to be this face. And we're done. And so here's our different components. There it is. This component is made up of the front and back bodies. Body one, body two. Because I did it at the same time. So the way I'm going to assemble this drawer is I'm going to do pocket holes in the front and back panel. On the front, it will be hidden by the drawer front when I attach that. So you won't see those pocket holes. And on the back, you'll only ever see it if you take the drawer out. Which, once they're assembled, when's the last time you took your silverware drawer out of the cabinet? Years, so it doesn't matter. And so now for the bottom of the drawer. Here we are on the bottom. And you always know where you are because of this. This is nice. It tells you where you are. So this is the right side of the drawer, the front, and here we are on the bottom. So we are going to create a sketch on the bottom plane of the drawer. And we are going to draw an arbitrary rectangle. And we are going to make every edge of this rectangle collinear with the outside edge of the drawer. That allows it to update. If we change the thickness of the cabinet, it will automatically change the location of our construction planes. And then it will change the thickness of the drawer. And then it will change the thickness of the drawer bottom. So we can finish that sketch. And we can make sure we select everything here. Go to extrude. Make sure it goes in the right direction, which is down. And it will be drawer material. Enter. And there is the drawer. Let's tidy this up a little bit. And now if we turn everything on. And go back and activate it so we can see. There is our drawer. Alright. Now we need one more drawer. So we have already drawn the whole drawer. We don't need to draw it again. We know where it needs to be. So we can mirror this drawer to create the next drawer. So I believe we already have a mirror. A center plane. There we go. We already have that one. Right down the middle. And if you didn't or if you lost it or whatever, you can make a new one. So go up here to construction, the mid plane. And you select the two outside panels. And there is your new center. Your mid plane. So I already have it. Turn that on. And we can go down here and select the drawer. Go to create. Mirror. So the components have already been selected. Select it down here. I'm going to select mid plane. And hit okay. And there I have a drawer. Another drawer. Perfectly centered. And now just as a sanity check or maybe to prove to you that this does work, we can go in here and we can change a parameter. We're going to change the drawer slide parameter. I'll move this so you can see it update as I click. So right now it's a half an inch. If I do, let's say you're going to hold 1,000 pounds in your drawer and your drawer slide is an inch and a half. It's exaggerated, but it allows you to see the motion or the movement. There. It changes. It keeps the drawers perfectly centered in their slots, but it changes the amount of space between the drawer. It changed the width of the drawer, the width of the drawer bottom. Everything got updated. That is parametric modeling. 0.5. There. So the last thing that we're going to do in this video is create a shelf. I don't remember if we created a shelf in our very first sketch or not, but we'll go back and do that. So we can turn on and go to sketches and double click on that sketch, and that brings it up. And so there's our sketch that we already created. Just a refresher. We can delete this, and I'll do it again. It will let me click just that one. It doesn't want to let me. Trying to click just the line, just the back line of the shelf. It's not wanting to let me do that. There we go. Got it. Delete it. All right. So now we'll draw a drawer. I'm sorry. I keep saying drawer. We're going to draw a shelf real quick. So all we're going to do is create a random rectangle. It doesn't matter. We're going to make the back of the rectangle, the back of the shelf, go all the way back to the front of the back dado. So we're going to, again, go linear. We're going to dimension the shelf, D for dimension, and we're going to type in shelf material. And I want my shelf to be inset a half an inch. So we'll dimension the front of the shelf to the front of the cabinet, and we'll type in 0.5. Now, that's something that could just as easily be a parameter. It probably should be a parameter. In case you wanted to change it, maybe a customer wanted to inset an inch or maybe they wanted it straight right out flush in front of the cabinet. So let's just change that. We'll go to parameters, and we're going to add a parameter, and we're going to call it shelf inset, which apparently I've already done. Okay, shelf inset half an inch. So all I did was I'll delete it so you can see it. It's shelf inset 0.5. Apparently it doesn't like that. All right, I don't know why it won't let me do shelf inset again, so we'll just do shelf in 0.5. Okay, and we're going to double-click on that and change that to the parameter shelf. Oh, it's because I already had it. I didn't actually delete it. All right, shelf inset, there it is, half an inch. Finish sketch. Turn that sketch on with the eyeball so we can see it. We're going to select that shelf, E for extrude, pull it out. I want a new component. I want to go two objects all the way over to the other side, and hit okay. Now, you might say, holy smokes, that's going to make it really hard to get that shelf in. It's going to be exactly the width of the cabinet. That's right. It's going to be exactly the width of the cabinet. So you could add a parameter. I don't know what you'd call it, shelf gap or something like that, and then you would be able to go in when you extrude that and go two object minus shelf gap. I actually find it easier to test fit the cabinet. Once it's done, I've got the shelf again and run it through the table saw. It's faster, it's easier, and then everything is perfect. Everything should be perfect as it is, but it's one of those things. You do it the way you want to do it. I just like to make it so it's the full width of the cabinet, and then I'll run it through the table saw to sneak up on the exact fit that I'm looking for. Sometimes I might be looking for a super tight fit. I might have a customer that is really looking for precision, and I can do that for them. The cabinet is more expensive. Or if I'm going to make 10 of these just to have on the shelf, I'll take a blade's width or two off the shelf on the table saw, and then when I pull them out of stock to assemble the cabinet, I know it's going to fit. No matter what pieces I take off the shelf and assemble a cabinet, it's going to fit. So to each his own, there's a million right ways to do it. This may be one. I'm not sure it works for me. So there we have it. We've got the two drawers and the shelf in our carcass, all with parametric modeling, and all can be adjusted or changed right here in the future. So just to recap, what we have is our plywood. This cabinet contains quarter-inch plywood, half-inch plywood, and three-quarter-inch plywood. When I go buy the plywood, I will measure it with my dial, get my veneer caliper, and I will put that measurement in right here. So for example, half-inch plywood is never half-inch. It's more something like this, 467 thousandths. Hit OK. Now you didn't really see anything happen, but everything got changed. Everything that is half-inch. So this is going to be made out of my half-inch plywood. You can see right here, it's 467 thousandths thick. So is this, 467 thousandths thick, and it maintained exactly a half-inch for the drawer slide, even though I changed the thickness of the material. So if you haven't watched episode one, that would be the least important one to watch. It's just me typing in all the parameters, kind of making it up as I go. I'm trying to think what measurements am I going to need in the future to make this cabinet, and I put them in. You can always add parameters as you go. Episode two was creating the carcass, the full carcass. This episode, we just created the drawers and the shelf. In a future episode, we are going to create the drawer fronts, the doors, and that will probably be its own episode. We are also going to create an episode on how to modify this to meet all of your cabinet needs. It may be more work than it's worth to try to modify this using the parameters to get a bank of drawers. That might be something just simpler to start from scratch again, or you could at least use the carcass and change it and take away the drawers and the drawer dividers and all that. We also will modify this file for the upper cabinets as well. We can make a full upper cabinet just by deleting the drawers and changing a few parameters. For example, we can change the toe kick depth to zero, the cabinet height depth to whatever your upper cabinet height is, your cabinet depth to 12 inches, and you will have a upper cabinet carcass. We would have to delete these top stretchers and draw in a new top and extrude that. Just by deleting a few boards, changing a couple parameters, and adding a new board, you've got your top. It's as simple as that. Please subscribe and click the like if you liked it. Hopefully this is helping someone. I know these are very long videos, pretty long-winded, but if you follow along, you would have yourself your cabinet ready to cut. Also, in a future video, I will show you what software I use to create the G-code. It is not Fusion 360. While the CAM environment is excellent in Fusion 360, you can just get lost in the weeds, and you don't need so many options and so many features and so many things to trip you up when you're just using a 3-axis CNC router. You don't need all of that. I will show you the software I use that's all very affordable and well worth the cost. Thank you for watching. Again, please subscribe.