laser cut odd-shaped material optimizer?

[John Fehr]

Has an heard/have such a beast? For some of my projects, I have about 20 odd shaped parts. I've put them together as tightly as I can, but there are gaps, and I'm almost 100% certain there should be better optimized layouts to waste the minimum amount of material. (Acrylic in this case, which everyone knows isn't cheap. :)

I've already done a search here, and the only thing I've found is optimizers for cabinets, where the shapes are all rectangles or triangles. Mine have lots of curves, stars, etc in them.

Thanks!

[Thomas Bank]

I know that the software for plasma cutting typically has "nesting algorithms" in the program. These automatically "nest" the objects together to reduce waste.

[Richard Link]

I use Vectric Aspire for my CNC work and it has a very nice nesting capability. Not the cheapest option but perhaps some of Vectric's less costly packages (ie. Cut2d) may have a similar capability.

If you want to send me a file with some parts, I can run it through Aspire and see what it spits out. You can see if you like the output.

Richard

[Michael Kowalczyk]

go here http://macromonster.com/index.php type in Nesting in the search window and there will be 3 Corel Draw macros. You pick which one has the features you want.

Like Richard, I also have Aspire3 but I chose GDG nest so that I don't have to go in and out of CDR to get it done and it is simple, very quick and only costs $14.95.

Ecut might be the one for you since GDG nest only rotates 45 and 90 degrees.

[Rodne Gold]

Be careful when nesting acrylic , if your cuts are very close to one another , the material will warp and expand and you will lose focus or the thin inbetween section can rise and catch the head or focus probe or whatever. You might also find that the nesting package will lose any optimisation as to cutting order. The cost of material , even acrylic is not that high as to make a small % saving of useage worth the bother in some cases.
Where the nesting really comes into its own is not close fitting of "solid" parts next to each other , its more effective when fitting small parts into "holes" or "voids" of other parts. for Eg , you cut a BIG letter "O" and use the nesting to fit a whole lot of smaller letters into the inside of the O.
As an aside , Often designing items with a shared cut , like rectangular plates right next to each other , will save you more money in terms of shorter cut times than in material cost..obviously only relevant to stuff that can share cuts.

[Chuck Stone]

As an aside , Often designing items with a shared cut , like rectangular plates right next to each other , will save you more money in terms of shorter cut times than in material cost..obviously only relevant to stuff that can share cuts.

Being one of those people who can take advantage of this (but still being a Corel neophyte) how do
you get rid of overlapping lines if you drop one part on top of the other? I've looked through the
help files and tutorials and never found this.

I can place the parts so the lines match up nicely, but cutting the same line twice is
almost as bad as cutting lines too close to each other

oops.. Craig just asked this in another thread. That's what I get for reading from bottom to
top instead of top to bottom like normal people

[Michael Kowalczyk]

Common Cut lines are used more in the CNC side. Not sure if a "weld" would do it because I think you have to have an overlap and that would throw your dimensions off unless you built the off set into the file. Not sure it would be worth the time over the minute material you might save but could save time if you have repeat work. I looked at the Ecut http://eng.e-cut.ru/ a little deeper and it can remove duplicate lines so that might be one approach.
or you can try this one http://macromonster.com/index.php?mod=descr&id_desc=129&pageNum_rs_products=9&id=9 if your laser software does not optimize.

My lasertype 6 can do common line cutting but I haven't found one, a laser cut file, that it would benefit me as of yet.

[Craig Matheny]

Chuck and Mike this is a free download from Macmonster it removes common lines and turns them to dashes not sure we I guess to let you know it worked I just convert to hair line when finished. I will post the macro link here being it is free and if that is not allowed then I am sure it will be removed http://macromonster.com/index.php?mod=descr&id_desc=76&pageNum_rs_products=16&id=9

[Michael Kowalczyk]

Hey Craig,
Good find. Free is good sometimes:D.

[Richard Rumancik]

John, if you are doing large production runs of the same parts it might be worthwhile to try to optimize but there is a tradeoff between time spent and a few dollars of acrylic. I used to do some model kits from wood so I spent time optimizing, but for occasional jobs I'd normally just do a quick-and-dirty visual nesting and get on with the job.

[Lee DeRaud]

Being one of those people who can take advantage of this (but still being a Corel neophyte) how do
you get rid of overlapping lines if you drop one part on top of the other?"Virtaul Segment Delete" tool will remove only the topmost line of an overlapping set.
(If I think there's more than two, I just keep deleting until it goes away completely and then 'undo' the last deletion.)

[John Fehr]

Yeah, I just hate to waste any material. If there was a nesting program that found the optimal layout (rotating/moving the various parts) I'd be interested in that, but that's a pretty complicated thing to do I found out after writing a program to do that myself. A couple of pieces and you're fine, but after 3, there are sooo many possible combinations that it takes forever to run. Plus coreldraw doesn't seem very forgiving of vba apps, and I get tired of restarting coreldraw.


John, if you are doing large production runs of the same parts it might be worthwhile to try to optimize but there is a tradeoff between time spent and a few dollars of acrylic. I used to do some model kits from wood so I spent time optimizing, but for occasional jobs I'd normally just do a quick-and-dirty visual nesting and get on with the job.

[John Fehr]

Thanks for the offer Richard, but I download the Vectric Aspire demo, and tried their nesting capability. I went all the way down to 1 degree step angle, but they still didn't do as well as I did with half an hour moving parts around. (Even with all the clearance settings to 0!)

This was with about 20 pieces of various sizes and shapes.

Then again, maybe its optimizing for something other than horizontal material usage.



I use Vectric Aspire for my CNC work and it has a very nice nesting capability. Not the cheapest option but perhaps some of Vectric's less costly packages (ie. Cut2d) may have a similar capability.

If you want to send me a file with some parts, I can run it through Aspire and see what it spits out. You can see if you like the output.

Richard

[John Fehr]

Strange. I tried 3 copies of the pieces and see how it optimized. At a 45 degree step angle, it fit them all. When I increased that to 15, it needed a second page! You'd think at worst it would use the nesting it used at the 45 degree step angle that only used 1 page. Perhaps I'm using it wrong?