The plate part nesting and NC programming is done in the Cutting module. If the production order item’s geometry is not ready for production, it cannot be included in Nesting. The part must be finalized first. As described in Quoting Plate Part Cutting, the geometry can be drawn with easy-to-use tools or by using macros, or it can be imported from CAD geometry (DXF, DWG). Cutting does some validity checks for the geometry before saving it (overlapping elements, open profile, and so on).
The Orders list is the work queue for the nesting. The items are in the order of urgency, but the system groups the selected items based on thickness and quality as nesting jobs just by dragging-and-dropping and filling the jobs with suitable material. A nesting job is a combination of order items, articles, plates, and remnants selected by the user. In addition to these items, a job may also contain work areas. The content of the active job is available on the Visual menu for making nestings.
The nesting can be fully automated, so that the positioning of the parts on a selected article, plate, or remnant is done automatically. The result can be modified, or the whole nesting can be made manually by dragging, dropping, and positioning the selected parts to a plate or remnant plate. There are different move, rotate, and copy functions available.
If the whole plate is not used, the rest should be left as remnants for later use. There are three options in the create remnant tool for selecting the remnant areas: stepped, straight, and true shape.
For traceability, the history of remnants are recorded according to the mother plate used. This means that all necessary information from the mother plate (such as quality, charge number, and so on) is always automatically inherited by the remnant. This allows users to track each remnant, regardless of the number of times it has been cut.
After nesting, a cutter path is generated interactively or automatically with the Cut Profiles functionality. Cutting, line and text marking, bevel cutting, cutting bridges and ridges, common line cutting, and other features can be performed. When the cutter path and possible remnant are ready, the nesting is saved, and a cutting machine dependent NC program is created. The default SPx ENT installation contains only a "dummy" postprocessor. Suitable, cutting machine specific postprocessors are delivered separately.
Finally, by default, the nesting document containing calculated lengths of the cutter path, rapid movements, marking lines, and predicted time for the total cutting work are printed.
The cutting features support bevel set up (above left) and cutting order management (above right).
For more information, see the Cutting manual.