Step by step
Fit more parts on one sheet
The same parts on less material, arranged by their real outlines rather than by eye.
Before you start
Anybody cutting more than three of anything, or cutting from stock that costs money.
- A drawing with the parts you want to cut, all on the sheet.
- The size of the sheet you are actually going to put on the bed.
Select the parts, not the whole drawing
Nesting moves what you select. Anything you leave out stays where it is, which is how you keep a title block or a set of registration marks in place while everything else is packed around them.
If a part is made of several shapes, group it first. Ungrouped, the nester treats each piece as its own part and will happily separate a lid from its box.
Tell it the sheet you are really using
Sheet width and height are the piece of material going on the bed, not the bed itself. Leave them at zero and it uses the full bed, which is right only when the sheet is the full bed.
Margin keeps a strip clear along every edge. Use it for the width of your clamps, or for the part of the sheet the previous job already ate into.
Set the gap between parts
Spacing is the gap left between one part and the next. Two millimetres is a sensible default: enough that the heat from one cut does not scorch its neighbour, and little enough that the sheet is not mostly air.
Going below about one millimetre starts to matter. The parts are still separate, but the strip of waste between them gets thin enough to fall through the bed and thin enough to catch fire.
Choose how it packs
Follow the shape packs by the real outline, so a curved part can sit inside the curve of the one next to it and a small part can drop into the hole in a bigger one. This is what saves material.
Rectangles packs each part by the box around it. It is faster and worse, and it is the right answer when every part is a rectangle anyway. Automatic looks at what you selected and picks.
Say what the parts are not allowed to do
Keep grain direction stops parts being turned, which matters on wood with a visible grain and on anything with a printed face. Leave it off and the nester will rotate freely, which packs tighter.
Mirror lets a part be flipped over. It packs better still, and it is wrong on anything with a finished side, a print or a face. It is off by default for that reason.
Run it and look at what is left
If the parts do not all fit, extra sheets opens a tab for each one that is needed, so you can see how much a second sheet is actually carrying before you decide to cut it.
When it is done, look at the piece of sheet still empty. If it is worth keeping, put it under the camera and save it to the offcut rack, and the next job can be nested onto it instead of onto new stock.
Every setting, and what it does
9In the order you meet them. The second line on each is what goes wrong when it is set badly, which is usually the more useful half.
The gap left between one part and the next, in millimetres.
Below about 1 mm the waste between parts gets thin enough to fall through the bed and to catch.
The width of your beam, so the gap you asked for is the gap you get.
Left at zero on a tight nest, parts end up closer than the spacing says.
The thickness of the sheet.
Used to judge which parts can share a cut and how much heat a neighbour will take.
The piece of material going on the bed. Zero uses the full bed.
Leaving it at zero with a half sheet on the bed lays parts where there is no material.
A strip kept clear along every edge.
For clamps, for a damaged edge, or for the part of the sheet a previous job used.
Follow the shape, Rectangles, or Automatic.
Follow the shape is what saves material. Rectangles is faster and wastes more.
Stops parts being rotated.
On plain material this only costs you space. On grained or printed stock it is the difference between right and scrap.
Lets a part be flipped over to fit.
Packs tighter and produces the wrong part on anything with a face, a print or a finished side.
Parts that do not fit open a tab each.
Turn it off and parts that will not fit are simply left where they were.
How to know it worked
- No part overlaps another, and none crosses the edge of the sheet you set.
- The gap between parts looks like the spacing you asked for.
- Nothing you deliberately left out has moved.
When it goes wrong
4Parts are laid out where there is no material.
Sheet width and height are at zero, so it used the whole bed. Set them to the piece you are actually putting on.
A part came out mirrored.
Mirror is on. It is off by default because a flipped part is the wrong part on anything with a face.
It barely packed tighter than I had it.
The packing method is probably on Rectangles. Follow the shape is the one that uses the real outline.
Two pieces of one part ended up in different places.
They were not grouped, so the nester treated them as two parts. Group them and run it again.