Part nesting

The Part nesting page is where the actual nesting process can be setup and started.

Once you have defined your materials and parts, respectively in the Material setup page and in the Model setup page, you can decide to begin nesting all parts at once, or select just some of them.

Nesting setup

Nesting part list

The grid on the left of the page contains the list of parts for which a material (and -- in case of graded parts -- a grading size) has been set in the Material setup page. The grid has the following columns:

  • a checkbox to select parts to nest; if a part is unchecked, the nester will skip it
  • an image preview, to quickly find a part; like in the parts grid, hovering the mouse over the image will show a larger preview of the part
  • the selected size
  • the type of material assigned to the part (see Material types)
  • the final yield computed when the part has been nested
  • the final efficiency computed when the part has been nested
  • a progress bar that is shown when the nesting for the part is in progress
  • an action column where some buttons are shown (used to start, skip, stop or restart the nesting for the part)
  • an interlocking button, which is used to perform a quicker nesting by packing rows/columns of stacked pieces (see Interlocking)

Nesting in progress

You can start/stop the nesting process by means of the Start nesting button at the bottom of the parts list: all checked parts will be queued for nesting. When parts are being nested, their properties cannot be modified from the Model setup page:

Locked parts

You can also export the completed nestings in *.dxf or *.svg format by clicking on the button Export selected nesting or Export all nestings.

Nesting preview

The right area of the page shows the preview of the nesting result for the part currently selected in the parts grid on the left.

Beside the visual preview, some information about the nesting process are displayed on top:

  • Current material utilization as a percentage
  • Current iteration being performed by the nesting algorithm
  • Current number of parts placed
  • Number o valid nestings found
  • Best fitness score found
  • Area of the current material sheet used

You can pan the preview by mouse dragging, or zoom in/out with the mouse wheel. To re-center the view, right-click on the preview and click Center view.

Interlocking

Interlocking

The interlocking nesting mode is a quicker way of finding an optimal layout of pieces, especially for simple shapes.

The difference between the classical nesting and the interlocking can be summarized as follows: * classical nesting considers all rotation steps assigned to each part, and tries to lay out each rotated part around the other in many different positions, so that it fits best and the overall bounding box for a piece pair is minimized. Once the best layout for a single piece pair is found, the pair is replicated on the material likewise. * interlocking considers the initial rotation and a 180° rotation only; the piece is then stacked in a row or column, which are replicated along the horizontal/vertical direction in two ways: * by just replicating a row/column beside the previous ones * by shifting a new row/column sideways along the previous row/column, so that it is packed as close as possible

<div style="border-radius: 8px; padding: 15px 15px 0px 15px; background-color: #DEF; color: #048; margin-bottom: 20px">
<strong>NOTE</strong>
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<p style="padding: 15px">Since the interlocking uses <strong>0° and a 180° angles only</strong>, better results can be achieved if the initial rotation of the parts are set to the minimum box rotation (<em>see <a href="../Parts/parts-section.md#minimum-box-rotation">Minimum box rotation</a></em>) </p>
</div>

You can perform an interlocking computation for a single part (by clicking on the interlocking icon on each part's row) or for all parts in one go (by clicking the interlocking button at the bottom of the parts list).

When the interlocking process for a single part is started, a dialog with all the possible layouts is shown after a while:

Interlocking layouts

The layout with the highest utilization is automatically selected and can be confirmed by clicking the OK button.

When the interlocking is started for all parts, the best utilization layout is automatically confirmed for all parts, without asking the user.