Getting started
Cabinet Run turns a room and a list of frameless cabinets into every part you need to cut, nested onto sheets and ready for your CNC. You enter sizes; it works out the parts, the machining and the layout.
You'll need: the room's wall lengths, where the windows and doors are, and a rough idea of the cabinets you want. A tape measure beats a guess.
Design on an iPad or desktop. On a phone you can look at projects and export, but placing cabinets is fiddly on a small screen.
1. Create a project
- Sign in and open Projects.
- Type a name in New project name (the client or job name works well) and create it.
A project holds one or more rooms and one set of shop settings: materials, construction and hardware. Everything in the project is built the same way unless you override a single cabinet.
2. Pick your units
Use the inches / mm toggle at the top right of the project. It changes what's displayed and what you type in. It does not change the design. Switch any time.
3. Add a room
On the Rooms tab, type a name (e.g. "Kitchen") in New room name and click Add room, then open it.
4. Shape the room
In an empty room the Walls panel offers Start with a rectangular room:
- Enter Length and Width.
- Click Create room. You get four walls.
Irregular room? See Draw the room.
5. Place your first cabinet
As soon as the room has walls, Cabinet Run asks "Place your first cabinet?"
- Click a wall in the plan to select it. The prompt shows which wall you're placing on.
- Click a preset, such as Base — sink. It drops into the next free space on that wall.
Or click Fill wall → Base run to lay out a whole run at once: a sink, a bin, pot drawers, and door cabinets filling the rest.
6. Look at it three ways
The buttons above the drawing switch views:
| View | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Plan (above) | Laying out the room and walls, dragging cabinets along walls, islands |
| Front (elevation) | One wall face-on: widths, gaps, heights, doors and drawers. Wall N · next → steps to the next wall |
| 3D room | Checking it looks right. Click a cabinet to select it |
Double-click a cabinet (in any view) to open its editor.
7. Get your parts
Open the room's Cut list & Export tab to see every cabinet's parts, then Nesting to see them laid out on sheets. See Cut list, nesting and export.
Before you cut anything
Set up your shop once, per project or as a saved preset:
- Materials: your real sheet sizes and thicknesses. Every part size depends on these.
- Construction and hardware: joinery, toe kick, drawer runners, hinges.
Then cut one test cabinet before a whole kitchen. See the checklist in Troubleshooting.
Rename a project or room
Click the name at the top of the page, type the new name and press Enter (or click away). Esc cancels.
Back up or move a project
- Download: open the project and click Download project ↓ (top right). You get a single
.cabinetrun.jsonfile with every room, cabinet and setting, plus the materials and hardware it uses. Downloading is free, with or without a plan. - Import: on Projects, use Import a project file, choose the file and click Import. It comes back as a new project. Your existing projects are never overwritten, so importing the same file twice gives two copies.
Materials and hardware you still have are reused. Any you've deleted, or that came from another account, are added back to your library.
Good times to download: before a big redesign, when a job is finished, or before you cancel.
Undo
↶ Undo (or Ctrl/Cmd+Z) brings back a cabinet, appliance or countertop you just deleted, up to the last 20. It covers deletes only: moves and edits aren't undone, and deleted walls and islands can't be brought back. The undo list clears when you reload the page.