Is the construction really parametric?

Yes — formulas and conditions you can read and edit, not a fixed set of construction presets. If your shop's rule can be written down, it can be parametric here, and that is what we test with one of your real cabinets in the first session.

Do I need a separate nesting product?

No. Nesting for routers and for saws, cut lists, part labels, cutting diagrams, the bill of materials and G-code all come from the same model as the design.

Does it handle grain direction?

Yes, grain is respected when parts are nested onto sheets.

Perpetual licence or subscription?

Subscription, month to month, priced for small shops — no five-figure buy-in and no maintenance contract. If a perpetual licence is a firm requirement, we are not the right fit and will say so.

MANUFACTURE SIGN IN →

A Polyboard alternative
with the client side built in.

Polyboard and Manufacture both take construction seriously: cabinets built from rules rather than drawn by hand. This page compares the two for a custom shop — how the parametric side lines up, and what changes when quoting, nesting and machining live in the same product.

—WHAT IT IS

Where Polyboard sits.

Polyboard, from Boole & Partners, is a Windows parametric cabinet designer built around construction methods you define once and reuse — a genuinely rules-first approach, and the reason it has a loyal following among shops that think the way it does. Optimisation and nesting are typically bought alongside it as separate products (OptiCut and OptiNest), and licences are perpetual per workstation.

If you already like designing by rule rather than by drawing, you will find the ideas here familiar.

—THE DIFFERENCE

What Manufacture does differently.

ONE PRODUCT END TO END

Design, nesting, cut lists, labels, G-code and client quoting are the same system on the same model — not a design tool plus a separate optimiser with a file passing between them.

THE CLIENT SIDE

Publish a design and it becomes a versioned quote your client opens in 3D on their phone, priced by room, with revisions tracked on the same link.

BROWSER, WINDOWS, MAC

No per-workstation install to manage. Sign in anywhere; the seat is your login and the version is always the current one.

CONFIGURED IN PLACE

Set the width and pick the options right where the cabinet sits in the project, and the whole thing updates live — machining included.

—BEFORE YOU SWITCH

What to actually compare.

Rules-first tools all look similar in a demo. These are the differences that show up in week three.

HOW DEEP THE RULES GO

Dimensions, positions, drilling, routing, hardware and banding all run on formulas and conditions you can open and edit, with options and variants on the cabinet itself.

NESTING INCLUDED

Router nesting and guillotine nesting for panel and table saws, both with grain respected and both updating when the design does. Part of the product, not a second purchase.

YOUR MACHINE'S DIALECT

Standard 3-axis ISO controllers out of the box, post-processor import from your current software, and a machine profile we build with you if yours is unusual.

WHAT SHIPS ON DAY ONE

Standard cabinets with their options, materials, tooling and hardware with parametric drilling — open any of them, adjust to your standards, save it as your own.

—STRAIGHT ABOUT IT

Where Polyboard is the stronger pick.

Polyboard has years of construction edge cases behind it and a perpetual licence, which some shops strongly prefer to a subscription — if you would rather buy once and never think about it again, that is a real argument and we do not offer it. Its optimisation products are also long-established and sold to shops well beyond cabinetry; ours is built for this trade and no wider.

We would also rather be honest about maturity. Polyboard has shipped for a long time; we are in early preview, onboarding a few shops at a time so we can set each one up properly.

—STRAIGHT ANSWERS

Questions this raises.

IS THE CONSTRUCTION REALLY PARAMETRIC?: Yes — formulas and conditions you can read and edit, not a fixed set of construction presets. If your shop's rule can be written down, it can be parametric here, and that is what we test with one of your real cabinets in the first session.
DO I NEED A SEPARATE NESTING PRODUCT?: No. Nesting for routers and for saws, cut lists, part labels, cutting diagrams, the bill of materials and G-code all come from the same model as the design.
DOES IT HANDLE GRAIN DIRECTION?: Yes, grain is respected when parts are nested onto sheets.
PERPETUAL LICENCE OR SUBSCRIPTION?: Subscription, month to month, priced for small shops — no five-figure buy-in and no maintenance contract. If a perpetual licence is a firm requirement, we are not the right fit and will say so.

EARLY PREVIEW — A FEW SHOPS AT A TIME

Bring a job you already built.

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

A Polyboard alternativewith the client side built in.