Architectural woodworkers are a special breed. They work to paper-thin tolerances on the biggest, smartest machines ever built for machining lumber. They produce work with such exacting precision and beauty that it will make your best trim guy wince with envy. And the mega tools they use to do it are so surgically precise, wildly expensive, and starkly beautiful that you'd buy tickets to use them. There's only one way to describe work of this caliber and complexity: Perfect. The same goes for the tools.

Woodworkers Mark Richey and Greg Porfido of Mark Richey Woodworking in Essex, Mass., engineer and build some of the most exciting custom interiors you're likely to see in any restaurant, courthouse, or office. We toured their shop (by "shop" picture an 85,000-square-foot building) and the heavy iron they use to dial-in furniture-grade finishes that make you think anything is possible.

The mega-tool woodworking world splits roughly into two main categories: sheet-good processors and solid-sawn stock processors. While there are large woodworking shops nationwide--production outfits that build the interiors of your favorite coffee shop franchise, for instance, or cabinet factories that crank out truckloads of kitchen, bath, and built-in parts you find at your cabinet supplier--companies at the apex of this field are building architectural millwork packages that are hard to describe. These firms work both solid and sheet stock and, like highly skilled custom builders or niche tradesmen, these shops produce one-off work with production speed. And jaw dropping precision.

LAYOUT

Design and Engineering. Stare-of-the-art CAD programs begin the process of turning an architect's dreamy vision into a buildable reality. Richey's shop uses Autodesk Inventor, a cutting-edge design software that creates a precise 3-D view of 2-D drawings. It can then explode the "drawing" to show every detail and dado illustrating how all large and small parts fit together. For example, for the lecture hall Richey is designing, the software shows the engineers how each section of vertical wall paneling intersects with the stair risers. The software can then accept design alterations--which requires talent on the engineer's part to lay out proportionally--so the panels break where they look best.

Engineers also can flip the drawing around on screen and can freeze it in any position to check a connection detail or view how shelf pins look in a bookcase. Autodesk Inventor even counts and sizes the screws required for each assembly. The result: Richey's team does more work in less time--and with greater accuracy--than ever before. It makes them nearly fearless, ton, and they work knowing they can tackle almost anything, says Porfido.

Prints. Autodesk's capabilities extend far beyond the engineer's office. While it takes the art and science of planning to new levels of sophistication, its impact also has greatly influenced work flow and quality on the shop floor.

Next time you're snapping lines on a deck imagine being able to take a full scale print of the floor plan and roll it out like housewrap on the sub-floor. Line up the corners of the paper to the deck edge and layout is done. No chalk no transferring measurements from paper to plywood, just good-to-go layout. Those are the kinds of plans Richey's woodworkers get: 3-foot-wide rolls of paper where 1 inch equals 1 inch. In fact, to help eliminate problems in the field, Richey's engineers do a full-size framing plan to help the framer lay out the walls--months before his craftspeople show up to install the interior.

TOOL STEEL

There's a fork in the road when a load of lumber shows up at Richey's shop. Generally speaking, the solid-sawn stock goes in one direction through a series of machines that most woodworkers might recognize and the sheet goods go in another. The sheet goods typically get processed by the T-rexes of mega tools: computer-driven monsters that are bigger, heavier, and way more expensive than your pickup truck But on Richey's football field-sized shop floor where machinery is planted shoulder-to-shoulder, there are some units that do double duty.

SHEET GOODS

Beam Saw. You can cut plywood or Melamine accurately on a table saw, but when there are hundreds or even thousands of pieces in a project, say an office suite or a chain of retail stores, your crew needs something bigger or they won't get much sleep. Richey's shop has a Schelling FMH beam saw. This $150,000 machine does what it would take an army of skilled woodworkers to do, but with computer-controlled accuracy and in a fraction of the time.

The Schelling not only cuts stock, but also, when the operator enters a cut list from the design software, the machine's computer calculates the optimum way to cut each sheet, reducing waste, and (if it has one) determines which way the grain should run. The operator enters cut list information and, when prompted by the computer, loads material and positions it for cross-cuts or rips.