I searched through a significant portion of the Internet for ideas when developing a concept for my cabinet. About 40% of the total Internet by my reckoning (the other 60% everyone knows is committed to porn {by the way, I do not recommend data-mining that portion for ideas on cabinet construction; the topics are typically unrelated}). I found many, many sources of inspiration which I will document in site links. Without a strong desire to immediately get my hands dirty, or the mental capacity to retain technical details on a complex three-dimensional figure, I opted to download and establish a functional understanding of a free 3D drawing program called Sketch-Up. From my understanding, Sketch-Up is not as powerful a program as AutoCad, but it is instead much less resource intensive to work with from a computing perspective, easier to learn, and most importantly - free. I was able to 'build', part by part, a complete functional schematic of my proposed cabinet's interworkings to scale. This took much trial and error, but I believe I finally achieved the desired effect. That effect being a model I can later manipulate and reference for measurements that also demonstrates the mechanics of the cabinet in simulated dimensional space. It serves as a drawn and measured blueprint, and i have acquired it without spending a dime.
By the way, this is an excellent opportunity to inform the reader that as fun as it is to have a complete working model in a digital format, it is f*ing frustrating to do this without already having the resources to act on a design. This shortcoming led to other fun activities to hold me over in the mean time such as: cost analysis, vendor shopping, construction methods research, and documentation. The cool-off period is also the likely-most reason why this website exists.
I will be happy to share my finished designs and have provided instructions for that on the 'Contact' tab of my site. I only pray that they are not acted upon before I can do so myself. The program I used (Sketch-Up remember) is available
here. I've also made available links to download individual components I uses as well. Keep in mind that Sketch-Up has a large community of users who often post models of components to its
online repository. It's very likely that if you're looking for something specific, a key word search will save you hours of blinding design work.
I will be happy to share my finished designs and have provided instructions for that on the 'Contact' tab of my site. I only pray that they are not acted upon before I can do so myself. The program I used (Sketch-Up remember) is available here. I've also made available links to download individual components I uses as well. Keep in mind that Sketch-Up has a large community of users who often post models of components to its online repository. It's very likely that if you're looking for something specific, a key word search will save you hours of blinding design work.