What is the Purpose of Cabinet Shop Drawings?

Builders are often interested in the cabinet shop drawing work of a custom home project. Do you ever wonder why these shop drawings are so important? Let’s dig deeper.

We, at BluEntCAD, have been associated with a lot of millwork companies from the last two decades and we have certainly noticed that almost everyone has a different opinion about shop drawings. It starts from the increased demand of every minute detail required in the drawings to the changes which could be allowed to the architect’s cabinet designs. Everyone longs to personalize their work according to their personal style.

There are some companies that do not support adding too much detailing into the shop drawings because they don’t want any interference from the architect’s side in the later stages. They just simply want to build it how they like it. It’s more like – freedom of creating your ideas. Such companies believe that if an architect has already drawn the drawings, then we don’t really need the detailed cabinet shop drawings. However, this scenario could be possible in smaller projects, but the bigger ones need proper drawings.

On the contrary, there are companies who completely support shop drawings and want every single detail such as screw position and line boring embedded in them.

The most common explanation for demonstrating the purpose of cabinet shop drawings is to showcase that the detailed shop drawings can easily illustrate the methods of constructing the cabinets to the manufacturer without any doubts and errors.

But, is that it? Let’s figure it out

Benefits accomplished with the cabinet shop drawings

Finding Errors

The detailed cabinet shop drawings help in discovering every kind of errors or conflicts at the early stage.

The millwork drafters or designers start their job with the source material such as architectural drawings. These architectural drawings are quite detailed in some cases and in some, they aren’t where drafters are bound to predict a lot based on their imagination and experience.

In some of the cases, the information given in the architectural drawings leads to confusion. This is where the cabinet shop drawings play an important role in rooting out the majority of the conflicts and helping the contractor and architects to address these major issues at the design stage.

Cost-Effective

Technology advancement in millwork tools has given the strongest assistance to the millwork industry. The power of cabinet shop drawings has helped and changed the methods of construction to save the financial cost of the project from the era when the hardware mistakes could cost you a lot.

The strength of substituting the hardware and changing the methods of construction is unmatchable in the cost-saving game.

Shop drawings help in the deep understanding of these substituting material and last-minute changes of the design. These drawings also help enormously in getting the approval from the client and if you are making an official request for the substitution material, it proves to be a strong approach in getting a favorable result.

Understanding the Art of Detailing

We all know that shop drawings are filled with every kind of details. Do you think its good or bad?

Cabinet shop drawings should have enough detailing which would showcase the exact product structure to the architect along with the construction methods. Nonetheless, there are many millwork companies who believe in adding the intricate details of the millwork product to every single dowel and screw location. Does this sound like a problem? No, right.

But having extra information is also an issue because it makes the shop drawings look overcrowded and confusing which leads to a series of errors and miss the important things during the manufacturing. It has been noticed in the architect’s community that, except for few, there are many architects who don’t worry too much about such detailing.

It practically wastes everyone’s time as it could be spent in getting the drawings quicker or probably focusing on the other important tasks. Even if you don’t have extra tasks to indulge in, then you might spend this time in re-examining the work rather than complicating it.

Apart from the cabinet shop drawings job, it is recommended not to spend excessive hours detailing the micro things which aren’t in your scope unless you think it is very necessary for the project. We often have seen designers including the same window replicating again and again on a single wall along with the cabinets.

You should, in fact, add a call-out with the simple representation to get the most out of it. In short, if you’re spending time repeating things, then you are clearly wasting more than just your time. So the moral of the story is that you should limit your details as per the scope.

Take Away

BluEntCAD is a millwork drafting company serving in various divisions of millwork including millwork shop drawings services, tile shop drawings, metal shop drawings, stone shop drawings. As a business company that works on a variety of millwork projects around the globe, we have gathered immense knowledge and experience in different methods.

At last, we do what our clients demand and are happy to spend money (according to work of course) whether they want a basic shop drawing service or a Davis Mega Mystery Maze with every last screw. Reach out to us to know more.

Maximum Value. Achieved.