PanelCraft FAQ: design, cutting, quotes and billing

A desktop application for cabinet makers and joinery shops. You draw any panel furniture, and the same design produces the cutting layout, the priced quote, the drawings and the machining files.

Windows 10 or later and macOS 11 or later. See the download page for the requirements.

Joinery and cabinet shops, furniture makers, kitchen and wardrobe fitters and designers who quote panel furniture cut from chipboard, MDF and plywood.

An optimizer starts from a list of sizes you typed. PanelCraft starts from the design, so the list, the layout, the price and the documents are all derived from it and cannot drift apart when the design changes.

PanelCraft is built for panel furniture. Parts are boards that can be rotated about the vertical axis and shaped with trapezoid, chamfer and notch outlines.

PanelCraft is a desktop application for Windows and macOS. Your data stays on your computer.

Yes. Freeform design is the foundation. Parametric wardrobes, TV units and chests of drawers are starting points, and any of them converts to freeform in one undo step.

Select, Move, Rotate, Resize, Add panel, Add here (shelves, splits, doors, drawers, sliding doors, rail, back, plinth) and Measure, with snapping, collision feedback, arrays and mirrors.

Yes. Panels rotate about the vertical axis to any angle and can take trapezoid, chamfer or notch outlines. Shaped parts are cut from their bounding rectangle and the waste is priced.

Yes: two, three or four doors with overlap, track heights, lane offset, reveal, handles and soft close, with a preview before anything enters the model.

It suggests connectors, hinges, handles, slides and legs with the reason for each. Nothing is added until you tick it. Hinges per door follow the door height.

A parametric back that does not fit the sheet is split into the fewest vertical strips that do, aligned to the dividers where possible, and you are told.

Yes. Kerf defaults to 3.2 mm and trim to 10 mm, and both are settings. There is no kerf gap at a trimmed sheet edge.

Yes. When board and part both carry grain the orientation is fixed; otherwise the optimiser may rotate the part. Cut sheets show grain arrows.

Yes. The packer produces guillotine layouts, in which every cut runs edge to edge.

Yes. Save offcuts to stock after a job and tick the stock option on the next one; those pieces are used first at no cost.

Yes. Add alternate sheet sizes with prices to a board; each is tried and the cheapest complete result wins.

It runs in the background as you edit. In our benchmarks 600 parts on one material take about 40 milliseconds and a typical wardrobe about a millisecond and a half.

Boards by the sheets the cut layout uses, edge banding per type from true edge lengths with a 5 % allowance, hardware by quantity or by the metre, then labour, margin and tax in that order, rounded half-up to two decimals in sequence.

While the cut layout is still being computed the status bar shows an estimate range. When the layout is final it shows the exact quote total. The exact total has been inside the estimated range in 98 % of our test projects.

Yes, as CSV, with column mapping and a preview of every change. Nothing applies until you confirm, and ambiguous numbers such as 2.800 are rejected rather than guessed.

An unplaced part or a missing library entry is flagged on the quote and the interface does not present it as final.

Yes, on Pro and Studio. Clients, quote numbers, validity and status are stored in a local database, and a sent quote keeps its lines and total.

Yes. The document language is set separately from the interface language, so you can print a quote in your client’s language.

Cut sheets, cut list, panel labels, assembly sheet, drawings, parts list and the machining DXF and CSV: eight files in one dated folder. Basic writes the two CSV files, Pro six files and Studio all eight.

Part contours, cable holes, hinge cups and optional 32 mm shelf-pin holes in sheet coordinates, as DXF R12 and as CSV.

The files are neutral formats that cutting services and CAM software read. They do not depend on a machine vendor.

The origin is the bottom-left corner of each sheet, X along the sheet length, Y up, in millimetres, in both the DXF and the CSV.

Yes. Drawings are A3 landscape with the smallest standard scale that fits, and the SVG is sized in paper millimetres.

A presentation view that places the design to scale in your customer’s photograph. You calibrate the camera from the floor, place the piece, set the light and export an image or a PDF page. It is part of Studio.

Projects are .panelcraft files wherever you save them. Libraries, clients, decor images and settings are in the application’s data folder on your computer. Nothing is uploaded.

Not to work. The licence is checked online when it is due and keeps working through a grace period of several days offline.

Yes. Copy the .panelcraft file. Import your decor images and libraries there, and the project opens as it was.

PanelCraft does not upload your designs, prices, clients or photos. See the privacy policy and the security page.

Choose File > License, enter your licence key and activate. The licence is stored as a signed token on your computer.

Projects up to 50 MB, CSV files up to 10 MB, decor images up to 8 MB each, room photos read up to 40 MB and stored at up to 10 MB.

14 days from first launch with all Studio features, no payment details needed.

Basic EUR 19, Pro EUR 39 and Studio EUR 79 per month, or EUR 190, 390 and 790 per year. See the pricing page.

Pro includes pricing, quotes, clients and the PDF documents. Studio adds room view, machining export and team features.

Payments are processed by Paddle, our merchant of record, which also calculates and collects taxes at checkout and issues the invoice.

You can cancel at any time; access continues to the end of the paid period. A first purchase can be refunded in full within 14 days. See the refund policy.

A licence is for one named user. For several people, each user needs a licence. See the licence summary.