We'll be moving to a different shop in a few months. Not sure of the size. It will be between 4,000 - 5,000 sq ft. Looking for ideas on floor layout for cabinet shop.
Thanks for any advice.

You will need to give more information before anyone can really give you any suggestions.

My shop is 9,000 sq ft, its dimensions are 90' x 100'. I have two overhead doors. One is at ground level and the other is at a truck well. The ground level door is used to bring in my sheet material and lumber. The truck well is where we ship our finished product. These are on the East wall. There is about 35' between these doors.

The wall along the side by the ground level door is where we store our inventory of sheet goods, plywood, melamine and lumber. I do have a forklift and it is parked near these materials. I have high walls, 20', so I am able to store a lot of material.

Along my west wall, from north to south, I have my CNC router, my sliding bed table saw, my edgebander, a construction boring machine a Chop saw and a dust collector. To give us a little more room, the sliding bed saw and the edgebander are not running parallel to the west wall. These are set at about a 20 degree angle from the wall.

Along my south wall, starting with my dust collector and chop saw, I have a table saw, a lift table which is in an assemble area, a case clamp and in the SE corner, I have my finishing area.

Packed in between the two overhead doors along the east wall is my woodworking area and there is so much equipment here, I really don't even want to mention them. Just a few, a molder, widebelt sander, two shapers, tenor, slot mortiser, glue up racks, rip saw, profile machine, resaw bandsaw, 24" planer, and there is more. Some of the equipment locations will depend on how often it is used and sometimes, it has to be tied into dust collection.

Map out your flow. Using a program like AutoCAD, do an equipment layout. Another consideration is electricity and the cost of new wiring. My planer and Wide belt sander run off the same electric breaker/connection. This saved money on installation, but if both are running at the same time, the breaker might blow. These two machines also are hooked to an outside dust collector.

I built my shop and I like my layout. When people visit my shop, it makes no sense to most, but there is a flow. People working in my shop need to develop many skills. Once they do develop skills and understand the flow, they are very productive.

Good idea to get opinions. Good luck.

The question is the answer

In the concrete business when they have to figure out how pour walls for tilt-ups they make "paper dolls" to figure out the best way to make the pours.

I'm with Paul, more info. What type of work? What machinery, and a bit more about the layout if the space would be the only way to give pertinent input. We are contemplating a big rework of our layout presently but so much depends on how you process panels, how much solid wood processing, as Paul said, dock? Forklift? Long shotgun style shop or???

I'm interested in all the input myself.

If you're not sure of the size, I presume you are not sure of the shape of the building or if there are any walls or posts or any other obstructions or limiting factors

Mu suggestion is to make paper cutouts to scale of each of your machines footprint with also room to work at said machine. Then look at how you want the work / product to flow through the building. That will be answer. When I moved, I had to take into account a wall across the middle of the building and several support posts down the middle as well.

By the way, do not be afraid that if it doesn't work the first time, you will move things again. I have moved machines and work flow several times to now I think it is just about right (until someone come's up with a better idea).

Here are the rules I try to follow when laying out a floor plan.
1. Material comes in one end of shop and product leaves the other.
2. Nothing moves backwards
3. Lighting lighting lighting lighting and then some more.
4. Minimize the traffic pattern of your forklift.
5. Vertical storage is your friend.
6. If it doesn't have a place it doesn't belong in the shop.

You should have a good idea of what works and what doesn't from your old shop. You don't mention number of employees, size of spray booth, nothing. So fix what is broken now as a starter.

Build a scale model.

I used a scrap of ¼" and made cut outs of scrap. I just shuffled the parts around until I was happy with the layout.

This isn't the exact layout we ended up with, but it's pretty close. I found when everything is in place it needed to be nudged around a bit to get it right. I ran all of my electrical

View higher quality, full size image (3840 X 2160)

Know the fire and building codes of where you are moving, if it's a different city or a move into the county it could change the requirements and costs.

Do you require an air quality /EPA type permit at a new location (coatings, dust, chemicals)?

Are there any tax advantages between locations, any enterprise zones that reduce taxes? Any property or use taxes that raise or lower the cost?

Are the utilities the same cost or are you in a different utility district with a different power /gas cost?

Does the plant need to be 100% functional before occupancy is approved (more downtime).

Can you cut and edge and machine a bunch of parts at one location and then move the part and the machines and start assembly while machines are being moved and installed.

You shouldn't sign a lease /buy a building until you know what is required.

This is a good time to replace and or add machines as the new machines can go to the new plant ( if you can afford it).

Develop a budget for moving machines, machine setup, and connections, downtime moving costs.

If you save money doing this your self that's work you aren't making and selling. Is the reduction in sales worth not hiring other trades.

Although ideal might be feed through the goal is to reduce part movement and material movement as parts travel through the shop. You need a fungible design that allows for different building shapes and sizes

Plan for expansion, plan for a CNC even if its 3 years away, leave space for future equipment.
Group your machines so air, dust and power runs are shorter.

Many good point made earlier.

We moved recently. We got a new collector for the new shop and dropped all the dust, air and electric before we moved. It took months to do all this. We also renovated the office got the permits and sign off's How ever much time you think double it. We continued to produce in the old plant while all this was going on.

We moved starting on a Thursday and were cutting wood by Monday and 90% functional by the following Monday. A great team effort.

I designed the shop with CAD and moved things around that way. Our shop is quite a bit bigger and I suspect more complex. It helped having layers for dust, air and electric.

Lots of fun in an exhausting way.

Good luck.