I have been mocking up a few different layouts for the interior of the cabinet in the past few days. There are certain criteria which need to be considered in this process. The original design calls for three drawers with maximized interior space for art objects. One of the factors used in the design of the layout is the height and width of the cabinet itself and allowing as much room for taller art objects. This space will co-exist with the three drawers. Initially, I designed the drawers on the right hand side of the cabinet interior with two lower drawers, a space for art object(s), and a drawer above. I had also considered shelving in the design but decided against this as the height of the cabinet would further limit any taller art objects from being displayed. In the photo, is my latest design of the interior. This layout is a good example of the design adage, "less is sometimes more". There is a fair amount of room on both the left and right side of the cabinet interior. The drawers have been divided into two assemblies with one drawer at the top left and two drawers at the bottom right of the cabinet interior. The design is also somewhat interesting and does not conform to the typical, established layout of drawers within a cabinet. This feature enhances the uniqueness of the cabinet interior in my opinion.
This design is not quite cast in stone as yet. I intend to further refine the layout with both interesting, unique design and optimized space as criteria. Mocking up is a great exercise in the design process, both initially and in finalizing the design. Having the components of a furniture piece mocked up to scale proportions reveals any design considerations which might have been overlooked in the initial design.
4 comments:
Norm, this cabinet is top notch and is coming along nicely.
What materials do you use to do your mockups? In the photo it appears it may be cardboard?
Also, do you do any of your design work in any 3D modeling tools such as sketchup?
Hi Norman.
Here's an idea from left field. Have you considered moving off the center-line with the inside edges of the drawers? What I mean is to make both drawers a little wider so that the right side of the upper drawer is right of the cabinet center-line, and the left side of the lower drawers is left of the same center-line.
I seems like that would change the feel of the space inside the cabinet. But I'm just trying to imagine it in my head.
Mat,
I use plain white cardboard for the mock-ups. I happen to have a few shets around and the pencil lines are more visible against a white background.
At this point, I don't use and computer modeling tools. I dabbled a bit with Sketchup but I sort of enjoy sketching and drawing on paper so this is what I do. Not to say I won't consider 3d modeling tools in the future. Mock-ups are important to me as they delineate the project and provide me a scale visual of any layouts.
JohnJoiner,
I did consider this also, but I want the right-hand drawers to be accessible only with the right door open. I think this is cool. Another consideration is the actual width of the drawers. Wider drawers , where the ratio of width to depth is larger, might have a tendency to rack and bind, especially with tight fitting drawers. Therefore, I made a judgement call and made the single drawers only as wide as I am comfortable with to avoid such an issue.
Norman
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