I've finished a chest of drawers and want to make it work within Poser (4/5). I understand that it will need to be boned in the Setup Room, but most info talks about setting up JP's, grouping, boning, heirarchies for human/animal characters. This will be my first time creating a "character" in Poser.

I don't think that using the Setup room will be the best option : I'd just use the hierarchy editor. Make sure your centers and rotating dials work OK (does the door opens realistically when you turn the y rotate dial, for instance) In the hierarchy editor, organise all your parts in the necessary order (doors parented to frame, etc...) Click on "create new figure" (let's say you call it "drawer"). This will create a "drawer" cr2 in the "new figures" folder of the character library. Save your scene and open a new one. Invoke your "drawer" figure into the workspace. For each of the body parts, check the object properties (in the properties palette if you're on Poser5), and uncheck the "bend" box. Check all rotation parts to see if they are opning/closing as they should. If not, chances are that the part centers got relocated by Poser. Open the joint editor palette and, in the top drop-down menu, select "center". This will show you a cross, where the center is. Drag the center back to the rotation axis (either by using the wheels, or by selecting a front or side view and dragging the cross with your mouse). Once all this is done, your drawer should behave as a normal, and you can save it back to the character library of your choice. If you want to trim things out, you can open this cr2 in a text editor and delete or hide unneeded channels (you don't need your doors to be able to rotate in all directions, or to translate) : you can either delete the parameter entry, or set its "hidden" attribute to 1. Hope this helps.

Attached Link: http://www.sams3d.com/Tutorial.htm

Thanks, SAMS3D and compiler!! SAMS3D, I've downloaded the tutorial and will try it before applying it to my own chest. compiler, should I import each of the moving parts separately (23 in all)? If I import the singular geometry, there is only one item in the hierarchy editor.

Attached Link: http://home.earthlink.net/~igohigh2/Desk_igohigh.ZIP

You may download it to compair too if you think it will help with yours (Phi file included).
http://home.earthlink.net/~igohigh2/Desk_igohigh.Zip

Thanks, igohigh. If I run into any confusion with the tut, I'll be sure to compare with yours. Exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks!

@kuroyume0161 : You should have all the furniture parts loaded in your scene before using the Hierarchy editor trick. But they shouldn't be put together in a single obj Geometry, they'll stay as custom Geometry. It IS possible to extract the Geometry from the different props to UV map it and put it into the Geometries folder, but it is another story. If you DO want to use separate obj Geometries, I think it would be better to build the cr2 with PHI builder. Anyway, Sharen is of much better advice than I ever can be.

Well, after some brickwalls, I have a Japanese tansu with moving drawers, opening door, and rotating handles using SAMS3D's tutorial! The hardest part was naming the groups within the OBJ file so that both PhiBuilder and, especially, Poser were happy enough to include all of the geometry. After that was smooth sailing - especially after turning off Smooth Polygons. ;) Set up rotations and translations with dials and limits. The hardest part is getting the texturing to look nearly as good as in C4D and LW. This model has color, bump, specular, and reflection maps. The specular and reflection maps are really ruining the rendered image (rather than enhancing it). Needs lots of tweaking... Thank you so much SAMS3D for the tutorial. Very helpful and easy to follow!