Blueprint: Cabinet Design — Complete Guide
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This is the full guide to Blueprint. It covers everything from drawing your first room to getting a cut list you can hand to a workshop. Read it start to finish once, and most things will feel obvious after that.
Blueprint is available on macOS and iPadOS. The workflow and features are the same on both — this guide applies to either.
Get Blueprint on the App Store
The basic idea
Blueprint works in three stages, always in this order: draw the room in the floor plan editor, place cabinets in the 3D room editor, then open each cabinet and design its interior in the cabinet editor. When everything looks right, you export a cut list.
You can go back and change anything at any time. The floor plan feeds directly into the 3D view — reshape a wall in the floor plan and the 3D view updates. Edit a cabinet's dimensions in the 3D inspector and the cabinet editor reflects the new size. Everything stays connected.
Projects save automatically. There is no save button.
Free version and Standard Edition
The free version gives you full access to the floor plan editor, the 3D room editor, and the cabinet editor. You can design everything completely, see it in 3D, and work out all the details. What's locked behind Standard Edition is the output side: PDF and XLSX cut list export, photo mode image saves, 3D model import, and exporting your project as a .blueprint file.
Standard Edition is a one-time purchase — no subscription.
The Cut List Optimizer is a separate add-on on top of Standard Edition. It takes your panels, packs them onto standard sheet sizes, calculates waste, and exports DXF files for CNC or cutting services. It's there when you need it, and not in the way when you don't.
Drawing the floor plan
When you create a new project, Blueprint gives you a rectangular room with four walls already in place. Set the rough dimensions when you create the project — you can adjust everything afterward, so don't overthink it.
If the room isn't a perfect rectangle (most aren't), drag any corner to reshape it. You can also click on a wall to add a new node, then push that node in or out to create an alcove, a bay, or any other non-rectangular shape.
Each wall automatically gets a zone — the area along that wall where cabinets can go. You don't need to set these up. Just start placing cabinets and they'll land in the right place.
Doors and windows
Select a wall and use the inspector panel to add a door or window opening. Set the width, height, and position from the left edge of the wall. Doors and windows appear as gaps in the floor plan. In the 3D view they show up as framed openings with glass, so the room actually looks like a room.
Keep-outs
A keep-out is a section of wall where you can't place cabinets. Use them for radiators, gas pipes, electrical panels, structural posts — anything fixed that a cabinet can't go in front of. Add a keep-out to the relevant wall and set its position and width. It shows as a hatched zone in the floor plan and blocks placement in the 3D editor automatically.
Island zones
Island zones are free-standing cabinet runs that sit anywhere in the room rather than against a wall. Add one from the floor plan toolbar, set its position, width, depth, and rotation. It shows up in the 3D view as its own standalone run, and its cabinets appear in the cut list the same as any wall cabinet.
Placing cabinets
Once the floor plan is drawn, open the 3D room editor. The room you drew is there waiting — walls, openings, keep-outs and all.
To place a cabinet, open the Add panel on the left. First choose the construction style and market: EU Frameless, US Frameless, or US Face Frame. This affects the default dimensions and whether the cabinet gets a solid wood face frame. Then choose the cabinet type, and click anywhere on a wall zone. The cabinet appears at that spot at the right mounting height for its type.
Each cabinet carries its own style independently. You can mix EU and US cabinets in the same room if you need to.
Cabinet types
Base cabinets sit on the floor. They get a plinth (toe kick) by default — you can adjust the height and depth, or disable it entirely in the cabinet editor. Wall cabinets hang above base cabinets. Tall cabinets run floor to ceiling. Topless cabinets are base cabinets without a full top panel — they have two thin bracing rails instead, which is common for cabinets that will have a countertop fitted on top. Corner cabinets handle the junction between two walls.
Moving and resizing
Click a cabinet to select it — it highlights blue. Drag it along the wall to reposition it. When there isn't enough space, neighbouring cabinets push out of the way automatically.
When a cabinet is selected, drag handles appear on its sides. Drag a handle to resize the width. Neighbouring cabinets push or pull to accommodate. You can also type exact values for width, height, depth, and offset directly in the inspector on the right. Changes take effect immediately.
The inspector
The inspector panel on the right shows the selected cabinet's dimensions, mounting height, render material, and visibility. Everything is editable. You can also hide individual walls from here — useful for looking into the room from an angle where a wall would otherwise block the view.
Designing the inside of a cabinet
Select a cabinet in the 3D view and click Edit Cabinet in the inspector. The cabinet editor slides in from the right.
The editor has three parts: the opening tree on the left, a live 3D preview in the centre, and the inspector on the right. Everything you do in the tree and inspector updates the preview in real time.
How openings work
Every cabinet starts as one big opening — the entire interior front face. You build the layout by splitting it. A vertical split divides it into a left column and a right column. A horizontal split divides it into a top section and a bottom section. Splits can be nested as deep as you need.
A split position can be entered as a percentage (50% gives you two equal halves) or as an absolute dimension from the reference edge. Each split inserts a real structural panel — a divider — whose thickness is taken from the cabinet's panel thickness setting.
Only leaf openings — those that haven't been split further — can hold content. You can add shelves, a door, or a drawer stack to any leaf opening.
Every opening in the tree can be renamed. Once a design gets complex, names like "Drawer column" or "Upper door bay" make it much easier to navigate.
Shelves
Select a leaf opening and add a shelf from the inspector. Set its position either as a percentage of the opening height or as an absolute measurement from the bottom. You can add as many shelves as you want to the same opening — each one appears as its own row in the tree.
Doors
Select a leaf opening and add a door. Choose the hinge side (left or right). For double doors, the opening is divided equally between them and the two doors face each other — the inner edge of each door controls the gap between them.
Each door has four gap fields: top, bottom, left, and right. These are the clearances between the door slab and the opening edges. Adjust them for the reveal you want. The inspector also shows the computed slab size — the actual cut dimensions — which updates as you change gaps.
You can flip the hinge direction at any time from the toolbar without deleting and re-adding the door.
Drawer stacks
Select a leaf opening and add a drawer stack. Set the number of drawers and their relative heights. The gap controls let you set clearance on all four sides of the front face — top, bottom, left, and right — plus the gap between individual drawer fronts. These are independent fields, so you can set exactly the reveal you want on each side.
One drawer stack per opening, and a drawer stack and a door can't share the same opening.
Visibility states
Every node in the opening tree has a three-state eye icon: visible, ghosted, and hidden. Ghosted renders the object as see-through, which is useful for checking what's behind a door without hiding it entirely. The state cycles with each click.
Cabinet materials and construction
Set materials in the cabinet inspector when the root cabinet is selected. There are three: the main panel material used for all carcass panels, the back panel material, and the door/front material. Each has a thickness setting. The idea is to set these once at the cabinet level — everything added afterward inherits them, and you only need to override individual pieces where they differ.
Top style controls whether the top panel sits between the two side panels (Between Sides) or caps over the top of them (Covers Sides). The plinth settings control the toe kick: height, depth, and whether it's enabled at all.
Banding rules set the edge banding for each panel type — top, bottom, sides, dividers, shelves, drawer fronts, doors. Expand any panel type to set each of its four edges individually. Rules set at the cabinet level are inherited by everything inside; override on individual panels where needed.
For US Face Frame cabinets, the face frame settings control the stile and rail widths, mullion widths, and the material. The frame is a structural part of the cabinet and appears in the 3D preview and the cut list.
Materials and photo mode
Blueprint has two separate material systems that do two different things.
Construction materials define what the panels are physically made of — MDF, HDF, plywood, particle board. These drive panel thickness defaults and feed into the cut list. Set them in the construction material library.
Render materials are visual — wood finishes, painted colours, wall textures, floor textures. They make the 3D view look like an actual room. Assign a render material to any cabinet in the inspector, and do the same for walls and the floor. There's a library of wood finishes, RAL solid colours, and photo textures for walls and splashbacks.
Once everything has a material assigned, click the Photo Mode button in the toolbar. The scene switches to full rendered materials with lighting. Orbit the view to find a good angle. Change the background colour to white, grey, dark — whatever suits the presentation. When it looks right, hit Save Image and it saves to your desktop.
Importing 3D models
Blueprint lets you import your own 3D models into the room — appliances, furniture, decorative objects, anything you want to visualise before committing to a layout. This is how you place a fridge, a dishwasher, a dining table, or anything else Blueprint doesn't model natively.
To import, open a project in the 3D room editor and click the Import button in the toolbar (top right, next to the other room tools). A file picker opens. If your model has an MTL file and textures, select all the files together in one go — Blueprint needs them at the same time to load materials correctly. Once imported, move the object anywhere in the room, rotate it on any axis, and scale it to match real dimensions.
Blueprint ships with a small set of sample models from the Kenney Furniture Kit (CC0 licence) to get you started. For everything else:
Kenney Furniture Kit is fully CC0 — no attribution required, free for any purpose. Simple style, works well for layout planning.
CGTrader free OBJ models has a large searchable catalogue with a free tier. Quality varies, but there are useful objects if you're willing to browse.
3D model import requires Standard Edition.
Exporting the cut list
When the design is ready, open the Exports menu in the toolbar. You have two formats: PDF and XLSX.
PDF is the one to print and take to the workshop. A selector sheet opens first — check or uncheck individual cabinets so you can export in phases if you're building in stages. The PDF groups every panel by material. Each row shows the panel type, cut width, cut height, thickness, and edge banding on each side. That's everything you need to hand to a panel saw operator or work from yourself.
XLSX is the same data in spreadsheet form — useful for sending to a cutting service, feeding into a CNC workflow, or doing your own material calculations.
The cut list is generated in whatever unit is active in Settings at the time of export. If you designed in inches but want a millimeter cut list, switch units in Settings before exporting — then switch back. The project data doesn't change, only the display.
Cut List Optimizer
The Cut List Optimizer add-on takes the panel list further. It packs your panels onto standard sheet sizes using a bin-packing algorithm — largest panels first, rotation allowed where grain direction permits. The result shows you how many sheets you need per material, the waste percentage, and a colour-coded layout diagram where each cabinet's panels are shown in their own colour.
From the Optimizer you can export a PDF shop drawing and a DXF file. The DXF has separate layers for the sheet outline, edge trim boundary, panel outlines, banding marks, and panel labels — ready for CNC or cutting services that accept DXF directly.
Enter the tool diameter manually (default 5mm) and Blueprint adjusts the packing to account for the kerf. Sheet dimensions, edge trim, and grain constraints are set per material group.
Settings
Open Settings from the project list by clicking the gear icon. Units can be set to millimeters, centimeters, or inches — Blueprint defaults to inches on US and Canadian systems, millimeters elsewhere. Switching units never affects the underlying data, only what you see and type.
A few things worth knowing
Blueprint stores all measurements internally in millimeters regardless of the display unit. You can switch units at any time without affecting your project.
Cabinet-local coordinates in the geometry engine are centred: X=0 at the width centre, Y=0 at the bottom, Z=0 at the depth centre. If you're ever looking at a panel dimension that seems off, the resolved size shown in the inspector is the actual computed cut size after all thicknesses and gaps are accounted for — that's the number to trust.
Projects are saved automatically whenever you make a change. You can also export a .blueprint file from the File menu to back up a project or share it with someone else.
No account or login is required. The app uses no analytics or advertising. The only external service is Apple StoreKit for the one-time in-app purchase.