Case Study: Gingerbread Homes achieves scalable, factory‑ready modular cottage kits with Alibre

Gingerbread Homes - Customer Case Study

Gingerbread Homes, run by David Johnson, used Alibre Design to tackle the challenge of turning a backyard garage-apartment project into a reproducible product: a livable, themed modular cottage that could be built from standard dimensional lumber and replicated as assembly kits. The scope grew from a small utility-trailer workflow to a full 3-bedroom, 2-bath cottage with custom features, requiring a single, highly constrained CAD model (about a 1,700‑part assembly) that would meet engineering and municipal inspection requirements.

Using Alibre Design, David modeled the entire house—including the monolithic slab foundation—and generated a complete bill of materials that he linked to a Microsoft Access parts database for easy parts analysis. Alibre enabled one-time design accuracy (engineer-stamped and passed electrical, plumbing and HVAC inspections), reduced build inefficiencies and lumber waste by tracking offcuts, and cut hours of manual costing and takeoff work. The result: Gingerbread Homes can reproduce customizable cottage assembly kits (plans for ~50 motifs) from a single Alibre Design model, ready for scaled factory production.

Gingerbread Homes

David Johnson

Founder