In Microvellum Toolbox, the ability to create your own custom hardware is one of the most powerful tools available to users in the software. One of the ways that we use it in our library is for sinks. Setting sinks up as hardware as opposed to other methods has many unique benefits, but before I go any further, take a look at the short video below to see how useful this is in practice.

What I am showing in the video above is the way we have incorporated easy access to sink hardware in our countertop product. The first step however, is to create your first sink hardware in the hardware file. I will demonstrate the process that I currently use to create each of our sinks and at the end I have a link where you can download each of the cad files, as well as the hardware machining token parameters used in this demonstration to make your first hardware yourself.

Step 1: Gather & Organize

First, you need to gather all of the information for your sink and organize it.

This will include:

Plan view drawing of the sink, either in 2D or a 3D model can work as well.
Front elevation drawing of the sink
Section Drawing of the sink (optional, but not required)
Cutout drawing or dimensions

Here I have all of these pieces laid out with their corresponding file names I will be using for reference. I like to use the same format for every sink just for simplicity and consistency. This also is very important later particularly for the section drawing.

Step 2: Create Machining Token

The next step is to create the cutout machining token on a miscellaneous part product to be extracted from the spreadsheet. The way I like to do this is by putting in a Misc Part Product, and then I copy the pre-drawn closed polyline for the cutout, using CTRL+SHIFT+C (Copy with Basepoint), this way I can select the basepoint where I want (0,0) of my sink to be (image 2A).

I then draw the Misc Part in 2D and paste the copied polyline at the origin of the part, and add machining to it, and then update the part from drawing (Image 2B).

Once the part is updated with machining, open Edit Design Data to access the spreadsheet (or Overdrive Pro), and select all ten cells of the machining token and copy them (Image 2C).

I then like to open Google Sheets and paste the data in a spreadsheet there, but you could just use Excel, or Notepad even (Image 2D).

Now you will want to go ahead and change all of the Z values in the vector list to 0. This can be done pretty easily in Google Sheets using the Find & Replace function, just search for the value you used for the depth of the cut when you added the machining. For mine I searched for ";0.75|" to be certain it only grabbed the Z value (Image 2E).

For rectangular cutouts with a quarter circle radius on the corners, I like to shorten the bulges to 4 decimal places, 0.4142, just from experience I have had less problems with them this way when nesting (Image 2F).

Jason Jendro has actually put together a great video tutorial showing this whole process and it is posted over on the Microvellum Support Forums, so if you are a member over there you can click the link below to watch the video.

How to extract PLINE data for hardware.

Step 3: Create CAD Blocks

Now is when I create each of the individual blocks that will be referenced by the hardware. I always start with an existing block from a hardware that I have already made, that I know works and paste the geometry into it, deleting the old sink's geometry, and then save it as the new hardware name (Image 3A, Image 3B).

Repeat this process for the Plan, Elevation and Section drawing (Image 3C, Image 3D).

Once you have all of these blocks created and saved, you need to get the plan and elevation blocks into the database. To do this go to the Microvellum Options menu, click on the 'Data Access' tab, and click the 'Database Explorer' button (Image 3E).

Once Database Explorer is open, you may need to click on Options in the top left corner, and turn on 'Show AutoCAD Drawings' first (Image 3F).

Then, navigate to where you saved your CAD blocks in the right two windows, and just drag the plan and elevation blocks over into the Hardware folder in the left folder tree. You should see it say 'Ready' at the bottom of the window when this is complete (Image 3G, Image 3H, Image 3I).

Step 4: Put It All Together

Now we get to put all of these pieces together and actually make the hardware in the material file.

Open up your material file, and go to the Hardware tab and make a new hardware in the folder you want to keep them in. Now that I have a library of sinks started, I will look for one that is similar, and copy it, and then rename it (Image 4A).

Once you have a new hardware created, double click on it to open up the 'Edit Material' menu. Rename it to what your new sink name will be.* Then put the exact name of the plan drawing in the 'Drawing Name' box, and the elevation drawing in the '2D Non-Associative Elevation Block Name' box, and click OK (Image 4B).

*Note: If you will be setting up the section drawing as I will show below in the Bonus Step6, it is important here to name your hardware the same as the Section Block drawing name.

Now, right click on the hardware, and select 'Hardware Machine Tokens'. Once the window opens right click in the window, select 'Add New Tokens', and select 'Polyline'. Then expand the tree by clicking on the plus sign, and now you can start copying and pasting each parameter from the spreadsheet where we pasted them earlier into the corresponding cell in the Machining Tokens window (Image 4C).

Bonus Steps:

If you want to take it a step further, and setup your countertop product to function like mine does in the video above, follow these next two steps.

Step 5: Add Prompts to Product

To have your product function like mine does in the video, you will need to add a series of local prompts to your countertop product, as well as some placeholder hardware lines on the hardware tab (Image 5A, Image 5B, Image 5C).

To make this part simpler, I have put all of the information needed from my product into the Google Spreadsheet in the link at the bottom of this post.

Step 6: Add Section Drawing

The one thing that hardware lacks, is the ability to bring in a section block drawing in addition to the elevation and plan drawings. I have devised a workaround that works pretty cleanly by putting in a Cross Section DRAWBLOCK token on the Prompts tab of my countertop product (Image 6A, Image 6B).

This is why it is imperative that you name your hardware the same and format it the same as your section block CAD file. The 'DRAWBLOCK' token needs a file path to map to the location of the section drawing. I am using the prompt for 'Sink Name' to create this file path, so if the names differ at all, it will not work. The formulas used to make this work can also be found in the Google Spreadsheet in the link at the end of this post.

Conclusion: Add Sink with 3 Mouse Clicks

After following all of the above steps, you should be adding sinks and their cutouts easier than ever. Once you start building up a library of sink hardware, it will become easier and easier, and eventually you will start encountering sinks that you already have! That feeling when you encounter that is like no other.

If you have any questions, please comment below, or send me an email, and I would be glad to help.

drafting@jacobedmond.com

File Downloads:

Downloadable Sink Hardware Starter Files