1.6 Designing a Piece of Furniture

CAD systems offer many ways to design various types of geometry of a model. Which way is the right one? There is no single answer, because all methods that give the desired results are essentially appropriate. We will demonstrate how to rationally design a piece of furniture with a frame using a specific example. We will be designing a standard kitchen cabinet as mentioned in previous chapters.

Let’s begin with the idea that any piece of furniture can have volume defining the geometry of the designed item. Geometry of parts is modeled on the basis of this volume or other parts that have already been created. Thus, we should start designing our piece of furniture by drawing a general volume (sketch) of the item (300x500x750) and connecting the parts together into a component named Sketch. This will be a reference sketch for the designed item. To make the sketch easier to use, we should paint it with transparent material. The cabinet will stand on 100 mm legs, so we should lift the entire sketch 100 mm above the ground.

Using the sketch, we will design the bottom of the cabinet.

The remaining parts are designed following similar principles. Please note how additional lines are used to construct the top fittings. We use them to easily draw the transverse fitting of 100 mm. Also, note how easy it is to define the size of the back and doors of the cabinet using the Push-Pull tool.

Finally, we insert the legs from the standard component library and connect together all parts to obtain a single component, i.e. PlacedCupboard. Now we can add this item to our library.

The piece is designed and can be used in the interior design.