If you are pricing Cabinet Vision and the numbers only make sense at a size you are not, this page is the honest comparison. Manufacture is cabinet design software for custom shops: parametric cabinets, quotes your client opens in 3D, and G-code in your machine's own dialect — in the browser, on Windows and on Mac, month to month.
—WHAT IT IS
Cabinet Vision is one of the long-standing packages in this trade, now part of Hexagon. It runs on Windows, covers cabinet and closet design through to machining, and is sold in tiers through a reseller and training network, with CNC output handled by its Screen-To-Machine tooling.
It is a deep product with a long history, and shops running it at scale run it well. The friction small shops report is rarely capability — it is the shape of the commitment: a Windows workstation per seat, a package tier to pick, and a buy-in plus maintenance that assumes a business large enough to amortise it.
—THE DIFFERENCE
NO WORKSTATION TO BUY
It runs in the browser, and as a desktop app on Windows and Mac. The office Mac, the shop-floor PC and a laptop at the client's table all open the same job at the same version.
MONTH TO MONTH
No five-figure buy-in and no maintenance contract. Preview shops get the numbers before launch and keep their rate.
QUOTING IS NOT A BOLT-ON
A design publishes as a versioned quote with a living link. The client walks the actual kitchen in 3D on their phone; revisions land on the same link with the cost spelled out.
RULES YOU CAN OPEN
Construction is formulas and conditions you can read and edit — reveals, dados, banding, drilling — rather than settings buried behind a dialog you hope covers your case.
ROUTER OR SAW
CNC routers and saw machines are both first-class: guillotine nesting for panel saws and table saws, book cutting, printed cutting diagrams with the fence setting per cut, and cut simulation before anything is cut.
—BEFORE YOU SWITCH
Feature grids are easy to win and easy to fake. These are the five things that decide whether a cabinet package works in a small shop, and they are worth asking of any vendor on your list, us included.
WHAT DRIVES THE MACHINE
Ask whether your controller's dialect is covered and what happens if it is not. Manufacture handles standard 3-axis ISO dialects out of the box, imports the post processor from your current software, and builds the profile with you when it is something unusual.
WHO OWNS THE DATA
Ask what leaves with you. Cut lists, labels, programs and quotes export as plain files; your libraries and jobs are yours.
WHAT DAY ONE LOOKS LIKE
Ask what is in the box before you build anything. The standard cabinet set ships with the account, with its options, materials and tooling — the catalogs of the major hardware manufacturers are coming online brand by brand.
WHO DOES THE SETUP
Ask who configures your materials, machines and standards, and what it costs. We do it with you on a call during onboarding, and check the output against a program your machine already runs.
—STRAIGHT ABOUT IT
If you need a local dealer who will sit in your shop for two days and train your people on site, that reseller network is real, and we are a small team doing onboarding calls ourselves. Cabinet Vision also carries decades of accumulated edge cases, and at the scale of a large manufacturer running many seats and shifts, that depth is the argument.
And if your shop already has years of Cabinet Vision libraries, trained staff and a workflow nobody is complaining about, the switching cost is the whole argument. We would rather you stay than move for the wrong reason — the shops this fits are the ones buying their first real package, or the ones whose renewal no longer matches their size.
—STRAIGHT ANSWERS
EARLY PREVIEW — A FEW SHOPS AT A TIME
The first session is your job on your machine: we set up your materials and your post processor with you, then build a cabinet you have already cut and compare the output to the program that made it.
—KEEP READING