Skip to content
VanCADdocs

Raw materials and cut lists

Most of a real conversion is not bought finished. The bed frame, the cupboards, the wall linings and the worktop are cut from sheets of ply and lengths of timber, and raw materials let you design with exactly that.

A raw material is a piece of stock rather than a product: a sheet (plywood, MDF or OSB), a batten (softwood or hardwood) or an aluminium extrusion. You choose what it is made of and the size it is sold in, place it, and resize it like any other object. Three things set it apart from a catalogue component:

  • Its thickness or cross-section is fixed. An 18 mm sheet stays 18 mm however far you stretch it. Only its length, and a sheet’s width, are yours to change.
  • Its weight and cost are worked out, not looked up. They come from the material’s density and the piece’s own size, so they follow the piece as you resize it or cut holes in it - and a piece trimmed to the van’s walls weighs only what is left.
  • It is on the cut list. Every piece is listed by material and size, ready to take to the saw.

What is in this section

Section titled “What is in this section”
  • Adding raw materials - the Raw Materials category, the standard sizes, making a material of your own, and the locked rows and worked-out figures a placed piece shows in the Inspector.
  • Shaping a sheet - cutting holes and notches, by number or by drawing them on the piece.
  • The cut list - every piece to cut, and a flat drawing of each sheet with its edges coloured by how each one is made.

Building around a reference

Section titled “Building around a reference”

A way of working that suits raw materials well: place a catalogue component where the finished piece will go - a bench, a bed frame, a kitchen unit - tick Reference only (ghost) on it, and build the real thing from raw materials around it. The reference stays where it is to snap to and measure against, but it leaves your bill of materials and your cut list.

Section titled “Related”
  • Bill of materials and weight - where a raw material’s weight and cost are added up with everything else.
  • Fitting objects - trimming a piece to the van’s curved walls, which a raw material’s weight takes into account.