Coved Box Designer

[John]

This is a Windows application to aid the design and construction of slope sided boxes made from mountboard (sometimes referred to as coved boxes, or slope sided shadow boxes).

Using the results from the designer, it is a fairly simple job to cut out the shape. The trickiest part being the v-grooves (The blue rectangle in the diagram). The corner cut-outs can be made with straight-edge and Stanley knife. And of course, with a CMC the process is even easier.



The program will run in any version of Windows from Win95 onwards.

It requires only four inputs: the Depth and Breadth of the slope, and the dimensions of the base (shown in red in the diagram).

Dimensions can be entered in inches or mm.

Click here to download > Slope Sided Box Designer <

To use, run the downloaded application file, Cove.exe, which can be placed in any suitable location on your computer, or on a memory stick.

The application outputs your design to a PLT file that can be used by most CMCs, either directly, or via CorelDraw.

[John]

Although this example has been cut on a CMC, it is not difficult to do it manually.

IMG_0667.jpg (27.24 KiB) Viewed 1606 times

V-groves on the base allow the sides to be easily folded up.

IMG_0666.jpg (32.45 KiB) Viewed 1606 times

[James Miller]

Thank you for providing this handy utility for calculating cove mat dimensions. Very quick and easy to use!

An incredible conicidence: Just a few days before I learned of this from a post on the USA Picture Framers Grumble, I submitted a feature article to Picture Framing Magazine. The subject was a project recently built in my shop; framing a folded flag and a certificate. I used two cove mats in it, and the article detailed how to use the CMC to cut the cove mats.

May I ask the editor to include a link to your cove mat utility in the published article, if it's not too late?

James Miller, MCPF, GCF
ARTFRAME, Inc.
Pickerington, Ohio USA

[John]

A remarkable coincidence James.

Certainly, provide the link in your article. I hope that other framers will find the application useful.