In our effort to reduce the number of separate cut part materials, edgeband materials, and hardware materials, Microvellum has created what we refer to as formula-driven materials. The interface for user interaction between these materials and the user is what we call the Material Wizard Prompts and is the subject of this article.

The Material Wizard Prompts and formula-driven materials are supported in Imperial and Metric Component Cabinet Libraries as of build 49.0, Metric Office Furniture Libraries as of build 1.1 and Microvellum software build 15.6.1806 or greater.

Older data may not be set up to take advantage of this feature. However, newer libraries coming out in the future will. 

Material Wizard Prompts Access

The worksheets or files for CutParts, Edgband, and Hardware may now contain a sheet or tab named Prompts. The data on this page is displayed in two locations – as a tab named Material Wizards in the Project Properties interface, and as a button named Access Material File Wizards in the Library Specification Groups and Project Specification Groups interfaces.

The worksheets or files for CutParts, Edgband, and Hardware may now contain a sheet or tab named LookUpTable. This sheet contains two look-up tables for use with formula-driven materials.

Cabinet Component Libraries with a build of 50.0 or greater and a release date before September 24, 2019, contain these two worksheets, but they will both be blank until you add the data. The Office Furniture Library build 1.1 contains the worksheets and the data.

Project Properties Access to Material Wizards

The first point of entry for access to the material wizards is from the Project Properties interface. Open a project and then click the Project command bar and then Project Properties. See the series of screenshots below for examples of this access and the resulting wizard screens.

The screenshots below contain data for the Microvellum Office Furniture Library version 1.1 for demonstration purposes and may differ from what you see on your system.

Checking the box for “Sheet Material 3 Custom,” “EB Material 1 Custom,” or “EB Material 1 Thickness Custom,” each adds a custom material to the “M” workbook section named Custom Material Name.

Project Spec Groups Access to Material Wizards

The second point of entry for access to the material wizards is from the Project Specification Group interface. Open a project and then click Toolbox Setup > Project Specification Groups > Access Material File Wizards. See the series of screenshots below for examples of this access and the resulting wizard screens.

The remaining screens from this entry point are identical to figures 3 – 9 above.

Formula-Driven Materials – a Brief Summary

A complete discussion of formula-driven materials is beyond the scope of this article, but here is general information about them that might prove useful in understanding the material wizard prompts.

Formula-driven materials and the material wizard prompts discussed in this article depend on the spreadsheet data in the “M” (Materials) workbook. That workbook must contain the tabs “Prompts” and “LookUpTables” in addition to tabs named SheetStockLibrary, SolidStockLibrary, and BuyOutLibrary. The LookUpTables tab contains two sections, one named Custom Material Name and the other named Material Name. The LookUpTable sheet contains the source data used in the Prompts sheet. The sheet named SheetStockLibrary, by default, contains 15 formula-driven materials in which the formula links to defined names from the Prompts sheet. It is data from this Prompts sheet that is displayed in the material wizards.