Q: I designed a crate in and noticed that my plywood walls (73x42) were broken into two pieces of plywood instead of just saying I needed a 73x42, how do I set up the instructions to always require one piece of plywood when the dims are within a 48x96 size?
A: In Preferences -> Settings there are 2 key fields you may modify to get a different result as a matter of company policy. For changes on a design only basis you can locate the same fields in the design: Container -> Rules tab
- The Minimum Dimension of Any Panelboard Piece -- This tells Crate Pro that if a splice is required that no piece can be less than xx in length or width. xx = whatever value you enter in that field. This is to help ensure you don't have a piece thats so narrow that the value/strength is compromised. Enter a value no lower than what you would accept a piece to be when building your crates.
- Ok to Rotate Panelboard -- What this checkbox does is look at the size of the material as entered in Inventory, the required size of the panel and what your Preference settings are, and calculates the required cuts. If based on the settings Crate Pro can reduce the number of cuts by rotating any of the pieces, it will do so. Crate Pro does not do yield management.
Answer 2: The information above is to make changes in your company preferences and affect all new designs created AFTER you make the change. As a general rule your historic designs will not be changed unless you lock/unlock the design. You may also change your company preference for a single design which will not affect your company preference settings.
Design -> Container -> Rules includes many of the preference fields that would most commonly be changed for individual designs.