Last updated July 28, 2026
CABINET draws elevations of cabinet faces from dimensions you give it — the width and height of the carcass, then the offsets that set out the drawers and doors within it. Change a number and you get a different cabinet; you are not editing linework, you are describing the cabinet and letting the routine draw it.
It is by Bob Thomas of Thomas Enterprises in San Rafael, California, and it comes with a Release 10 drawing file that has to travel with it.
It is set up in inches
The first thing an Australian reader needs to know. The defaults built into the routine are imperial: a cabinet 24 inches wide and 36 inches high, 72 inches for a linen cabinet, with a 2 inch offset from the drawer to the side of the carcass. Those are sensible American cabinet dimensions and meaningless on a metric drawing.
This does not stop it working — the routine draws whatever numbers you give it, so typing metric figures produces a metric cabinet. What you lose is the convenience of the defaults, since pressing Enter at each prompt gives you an American cabinet rather than a sensible starting point. The defaults are set as plain numbers near the top of the file with comments naming each one, so converting them to your own standard sizes is a straightforward edit and worth doing if you will use it regularly.
Both files must stay together
The archive holds CABINET.LSP and CABINET.DWG, and the author’s licence is built around that pairing: the files may be freely copied provided the two remain together and the header stays intact, so that people know what the program does and he gets the credit. His words are “Use and enjoy…”
Practically, the drawing file is not documentation — it is part of the program, holding geometry the routine uses. Extract both into the same folder on your support file search path.
Defaults that persist
The author notes that all the routine’s variables are local except the handful that hold your last answers, so the sizes you use are remembered and offered again next time. That is the right design for a routine you run repeatedly along a run of cabinetry.
He also names those remembered variables in the header and suggests renaming them if they clash with anything of yours — a courtesy worth noting, since most routines of this age leave you to discover collisions yourself.
Command reference
The file defines a single command, CABINET.
How to load it
Unzip Cabinet.zip and put both files in one folder on the support file search path, then load CABINET.LSP with APPLOAD. Our AutoLISP guide covers loading and the search path.
The header also recommends particular AutoLISP memory settings, which were a real concern in the Release 10 era and are meaningless now — modern AutoCAD manages that itself. Ignore that line.
Step-by-step usage
- Type CABINET.
- Give it the cabinet width and height. The defaults offered are imperial unless you have edited them.
- Give the offsets that set out the drawers and doors within the face.
- The elevation is drawn. Run it again for the next cabinet — your answers are remembered.
Compatibility notes
The accompanying drawing is described as a Release 10 file, which dates the package to around 1990. Written-for rather than tested-on, then, and by a wide margin. A DWG of that age still opens in current AutoCAD, so the drawing side should be fine; the LISP is parametric geometry work using standard functions, which also tends to survive.
Plain AutoLISP with no dialog boxes and no Express Tools calls, so nothing requires the full product; LT users on LT 2024 or later, the release that brought AutoLISP to LT, should be able to run it. See what runs on AutoCAD LT. Try it in a scratch drawing and dimension the result before trusting the proportions.
Download
| Name: | Cabinet |
| Description: | This file contains a parametric program that creates 2D representations of cabinet faces. |
| Type: | AutoCAD AutoLISP Routine |
| Author: | Bob Thomas |
| File Size: | 10 Kb |
| Cost: | Free |
| Worked on: | AutoCAD |
| Download File: | Cabinet.zip |
Related routines
- WALLS — the room the cabinetry goes in.
- Door LISP routine — doors for the same plans.
- Spiral staircase — another parametric architectural generator.