Some engineer somewhere might argue with this conclusion by saying that if there were three buses, then each bus would have to have 47 2/3 people on it... and that would just be inhumane. There is always some rounding off between the world of the engineer and the world of... the world!
In the "Is the cup half full, or half empty?" question, the engineer decides that the cup is twice as large as needed.
They could use a short bus, but nobody would want to ride in that one.
That's a hard lesson to learn. We have to think about what they're going to do with the information, and be sure that it's what WE want to do with the information! My go-to shelf width is 24" since most components can be slid forward and rotated for wire access on a 24" wide shelf. Obviously I usually don't get that size shelf!
I don't read minds. Period. If anything goes wrong, it's not my fault due to any inability to do this. It's also not my job to know about things I have never touched. I worked at a house and a couple of days later, received a call about some electrical circuits that were dead. I was told "You must have done something". I should have lit her up and walked away, but I went back and checked into the problem. I found a dead circuit, so I reset the breaker and it wouldn't stay, so I went back into the room and unplugged everything- that worked, so I returned and started plugging things in again. As soon as I got to the old floor lamp, the breaker popped and I saw sparks at the plug. I unplugged it and it turned out that some pinhead had replaced the switch/bulb socket assembly without insulating the wires. And I must have done something, eh? Bitch.
Earlier experiences with cabinetmakers taught me that professions have their own concepts of things. This one cabinet guy referred to the left-right dimension of one shelf as its width, but he called the left-right dimension of another shelf its length. I asked him why. Turns out the first shelf was particle board and the second shelf was wood, and the dimension in line with wood grain is its length.
From that I worked this out: When you deal with a construction trade, be aware that there are three dimensions: height, length, width, depth, breadth, thickness, and gauge. Those are the three dimensions.
You forgot 'strong', 'short', 'proud' and 'shy', as in "1-3/4, strong", meaning 1-3/4 + a little extra, 'proud' means a little thicker than flush and 'weak' or 'shy' meaning the opposite of their counterpart.
I understand why the cabinetmaker (loose term, after seeing the cabinet) might not have considered the space needed for the equipment- if you have done any drafting, you're dealing with some level of precision and if someone is ONLY thinking in terms of the finish dimensions of what he's making, that's the only dimensions that are important- they aren't responsible for anything else- it needs to fit the available space, it needs to be in the shape required, doors and drawers need to fit with a consistent gap and they need to open/close without touching the frame in a way that causes binding or rubbing the finish.
However, there's no freaking excuse for cabinets having no extra space. If the AVR had to go in this cabinet, I would have torn the guy a new one but as it is, I had concluded that he's not as good as he seems to think because his answer to my request to recessing the back panel was "I wouldn't know how to do that.". He showed that he knows how to make the proper cuts for that, but he did it wrong. He left so little material behind the panel that it crumbled when someone grabbed it- the procedure for what I wanted is the same, other than cutting the dado farther from the back edge.
I learned from that one to always say "left-right" or "up-down" or "front-back." An "up-down" dimension of something below a reference point could be called depth, but a "front-back" dimension of a shelf opening could also be called depth.
Rough depth, or finish depth?
Another cabinetmaker made a cabinet wide enough for two components to sit side by side, but it a center post made the openings not wide enough for even one standard width component to be inserted straight in from the front. There was a shelf, but it also could not go straight in. He made that "work" by making the shelf in two pieces, a front half and a back half.
The reason this pissed me off so much is that I have been a woodworker since I was a kid and have made a lot of things that had a specific purpose, so cutting so close to the existing equipment means that it's possible for the cabinet to be useless when the equipment is changed. With some devices being made smaller on a regular basis, he's probably safe, but it doesn't change the fact that his focus wasn't on the requirements, it was on the small parts. I did a job and the cabinetmaker actually called me to ask what I needed for the equipment space and even asked if I wanted slots cut into the shelves, for cooling. I was dumbfounded.
My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder."
