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The 3D Kitchen Designer

The 3D Kitchen Designer is a full kitchen and cabinet design tool built right into TimberCloud. You draw a room's walls, drop in cabinets, and see the whole kitchen in 2D plan or 3D — and every cabinet is priced out of the box, straight from standard construction on the materials you assign. No catalog product is required, so a finished layout becomes a real, quotable price you can turn into an order in a few clicks.

Availability: Build plan and up. The Designer is badged Beta, and each staff member also needs the Designer page permission (see Users & Roles). Staff on Free or Commerce who hold the permission see an "Upgrade to Build" message instead of the tool.

What it's for

The Designer is for shops that quote and build kitchens, closets, vanities, and cabinet runs. Instead of hand-entering line items, you lay the room out visually and let TimberCloud do the take-off and the math:

  • Draw the room — walls, windows, doors, and openings, to exact dimensions.
  • Place cabinets from a Library dock of your shop's standard widths, or let Suggest a layout fill the walls for you.
  • Price it instantly — assign a material and the whole room prices itself run-by-run and cabinet-by-cabinet, no catalog product needed.
  • Deliver it — email the customer a Design Quote, turn it into an order, download a whole-room cut list, or run a CAM nest for the shop.

Because pricing comes "out of the box" from standard construction, a brand-new shop can quote a kitchen the same day it turns the Designer on. Binding your own catalog products to cabinet roles is an optional upgrade for shops that want product-exact pricing (see Catalog & designer settings).

How to open it

The Designer opens from the Open Designer button in the top bar — the action cluster on the right, next to Create Order. It is not in the left sidebar.

Clicking Open Designer launches a fresh, blank kitchen. (If you're already inside the Designer, clicking it again starts a clean new room — your in-progress room is never clobbered mid-edit; it's already saved in your Designs library.)

Note: Don't see the Open Designer button? You're either on a plan below Build, or your role is missing the Designer permission. An owner or admin can grant it on the Users & Roles page.

The end-to-end workflow

Every design follows the same five steps. Each links to a full guide.

StepWhat you doGuide
1. NameGive the kitchen a name (e.g. "Smith Kitchen") before you can edit it.Design your first kitchen
2. Draw wallsLay out the room outline; add windows, doors, and openings.Walls, openings & views
3. Place cabinetsDrag cabinets from the Library dock, or press Suggest a layout.Placing & editing cabinets
4. PriceAssign a whole-job material — the room re-prices automatically.Pricing a design
5. Quote or orderSend a Design Quote, create an order, or download a cut list / CAM.Quotes, cut lists & CAM

Important: A new room shows $0 until you assign a material. That single step — picking a whole-job material — is what turns your layout into a price. It's the natural next move after placing cabinets. See Pricing a design.

The Designs library

Every kitchen you start autosaves continuously to a company-wide Designs library. You'll find Designs in the left sidebar (just above Orders, badged Beta). Each saved kitchen shows as a card with its name, the assigned customer, its status, and when it was last updated — with a 2D plan image as the thumbnail.

Open any card to keep working on it, quote it, or share it. Deleting a design moves it to Archived rather than erasing it, so any order built from that design is never orphaned. See The Designs library.

Designer Jobs

Orders that started life in the Designer are collected in a dedicated Designer Jobs report (under Reports). It lists each design-sourced order with its customer, PO, status, station, totals, and a link straight into the order — a quick way to see everything the Designer has produced. Designer Jobs uses your normal Reports permission.

Set-up for accurate pricing (admins)

The Designer prices out of the box, but a few one-time settings make the numbers yours. An owner or admin sets these once:

  • Materials, Labor, Rate Formula, and Job Defaults under Settings → Designer — the material rates, labor lines, and the shop formula that turns a take-off into a price.
  • The optional Catalog wizard, which binds your existing products to cabinet roles for product-exact pricing.

All of this lives in Catalog & designer settings.

Next Steps

PreviousCustomer ReviewsNextDesign Your First Kitchen