The Materials Library is your shop's stock list — every sheet good, solid-wood board, and edge-banding roll you keep on hand. Edit the rows once, save the library, and from then on every job you build pulls from the same list. The tab is also where you tell the app which material the current job should use for panels, stiles & rails, and edge banding.
Job in progress — can I still change materials?
No — once the cut list has rows, job materials lock for the whole job (see Overview help). Main-form fields gray out, the whole edge banding section locks in slab mode (material, width, thickness, and options), and right-click Use for Panel / Use for Stiles & Rails / Use for Edge Banding is disabled. You can still edit library rows and save the library. To build with different stock, Clear Grid and start a new job.
What you see on the tab
The Materials Library tab is split into three areas, top to bottom:
Three job-material combos at the very top — Panel Material, Stile/Rail Material, and Wood Species. These set what the current job uses.
Two buttons + a one-line hint — Add Sheet Row / Add Solid Wood Row / Add Edge Band Row (the label changes based on the active grid tab) and Save Library.
Three grid tabs — Sheet Stock, Solid Wood, and Edge Banding. The active tab is highlighted in light blue so you always know which list you're editing.
The three areas of the Materials Library tab — job combos at top, buttons + hint in the middle, and the three grid tabs (Sheet Stock highlighted in light blue) at the bottom.The actual Materials Library tab. Drop materials-library-tab.png into Help/images/ to replace this placeholder — capture the whole tab with all three combos at top and one grid (e.g., Sheet Stock) visible below.
Tell the current job which material to use
The three combos at the top of the tab drive what shows up on the cutlist for the job that is currently open. They are independent — pick one, two, or all three.
Panel Material — the material the door panel is cut from. The dropdown mixes sheet stock and solid wood, and each item is prefixed so you can't confuse them: Sheet — 3/4 Baltic Birch vs Solid Wood — Cherry FAS 4/4.
Stile/Rail Material — the material for the frame parts. Same prefix scheme.
Wood Species — only matters when a panel or stile/rail is solid wood. The app hides this combo automatically when neither side is solid wood, so don't worry if it disappears for an all-sheet job.
The three job-material combos. Drop materials-library-combos.png into Help/images/ to replace this placeholder — click the Panel Material dropdown so the popup is open and the "Sheet — " / "Solid Wood — " prefixes are clearly visible, then capture.
What happens when you pick a solid-wood panel
If you choose a solid-wood panel material (e.g., Solid Wood — Cherry FAS 4/4), the Wood Species combo auto-fills with Cherry so your cutlist never has an empty species field. You can override it afterwards — pick the species you actually plan to glue up from if it differs from the board source.
Editing the stock grids
Each of the three sub-tabs (Sheet Stock, Solid Wood, Edge Banding) is a freely editable grid. The columns differ per tab but the workflow is the same:
Click Add Sheet Row / Add Solid Wood Row / Add Edge Band Row to append a fresh row to the active grid. The button label always tells you what kind of row you'll get, so you can't accidentally add a sheet to the Solid Wood tab.
Type into any cell to edit. Numeric columns (thickness, cost, sheet width/length) expect a number; text columns (name, core, species) accept anything.
Click a column header to sort — alphabetical for text columns, ascending/descending numeric for thickness, cost, and dimensions. Click again to flip direction.
Tick the "In dropdown" checkbox on a row to make that material appear in the three job-material combos at the top of the tab. Untick it for stock you don't normally carry — the combos only show what's actually in your shop, which keeps the lists short.
Save Library writes every change to disk. Until you click Save, edits live only in memory and will be lost if you close the app.
Sorting the grid. Drop materials-library-grid-sort.png into Help/images/ to replace this placeholder — click the Thickness column header so the sort arrow shows, then capture the Sheet Stock grid with several rows visible.Tick "In dropdown" on the rows you stock — those are the only materials that reach the Panel/Stile-Rail combos at the top.The In dropdown column in real life. Drop materials-library-in-dropdown.png into Help/images/ to replace this placeholder — capture a portion of any grid with a mix of ticked and unticked "In dropdown" checkboxes so the distinction is obvious.
First-time setup
The app ships with a starter list of common sheet, solid-wood, and edge-banding rows, but they all arrive unchecked in the "In dropdown" column. That keeps your pickers blank until you tell the app what your shop actually stocks. Three quick passes will get you running:
Open Sheet Stock, tick "In dropdown" on the rows you keep on hand (e.g., 3/4 Baltic Birch, 3/4 MDF, 1/4 Tempered Hardboard). Edit cost or sheet size if your supplier's pricing differs.
Open Solid Wood, tick the boards you actually buy (e.g., Cherry FAS 4/4, Walnut Sel & Btr 4/4, Hard Maple FAS 5/4). Adjust nominal thickness and cost.
Open Edge Banding, tick any rolls you keep stocked.
Click Save Library. From this point on, every new job opens with the same shortlist in the dropdowns.
Once a job is set up, the Panel/Stile-Rail combos at the top of the tab let you actually apply a material to the open job. The grid below is for editing stock — the combo above is for picking what this job uses.
Tips
Always Save after editing. Adding a row or changing a price is not persistent until you click Save Library.
Use the "In dropdown" column to declutter. If a combo lists materials you don't carry, the fix is to untick those rows here — not to delete them. Untouching keeps the row available if you ever start stocking it again.
Sort by Thickness to quickly find every 1/2, 5/8, or 3/4 board side-by-side. Sort by Cost to spot pricing entries that look wrong.
The Wood Species combo is hidden until at least one of Panel or Stile/Rail is a solid-wood material. If you expected to see it and it's missing, check that you didn't pick a Sheet for both.
Type prefixes are display-only. "Sheet — " and "Solid Wood — " are added at render time so it's clear at a glance which kind of material you're picking. The underlying material itself isn't renamed.
