Anyone use vectric for nesting cabinet parts?

[Mark Bolton]

I'm sorry...I was unaware that VCarve would generate multiple sheets. Not my world and unfortunately, I made an "assumption" based on use to-date. Sorry...

Not a problem at all... I dont think its an option many people who use VCP for its conventional use take advantage of but its a handy one even for non-cab parts. You should play around with it a bit. Draw an odd shape in VCP and then do like a 10x10 array giving you 100 parts then select the nesting option, and preview. You'll get an active sheet with as many parts as it can fit, and then as many other generated sheets as needed for the remainder. Double clicking on any of the greyed out sheets will make them the active sheet.

It'd be great for a run of parts that requires multiple sheets. The plugin from SU has grain orientation so the parts come in from the dxf batch processor gadget aligned properly and you just set your border gap, tool diameter, and so on, and nest.

[Martin Wasner]

Two sided machining in cabinetsense is handled by the two sides parts having the second sides automatically saved within a sub folder called "flip" so if you must two side some parts you just set those aside and flip and run the appropriate part from the flip folder.

You're not flipping the whole sheet?

[Mark Bolton]

You're not flipping the whole sheet?

We do very little two sided machining so most generally we will only have a few parts that need to be flipped. Its rare for us so we tend to just fip those few parts that need second side work after theyre cut from the sheet.

Im not sure how I would trust the registration against the pins for cutting two sided flipping an entire sheet without perhaps squaring it up first? Never really thought about it.

We mostly use two sided machining on solid wood furniture or school furniture where you would have counterbores to be plugged on one face and blind dados shelf pins on the interior.

[Daniel Jones]

just to make things clear, we are not a "production shop" we do all kinds of cabinets. i really did think i was going to use mozaik about a year ago. but after using it it felt really clunky, and their costumer service was awful. cabinet sense is so easy to design that one off cabinet that most of our jobs have. things like labeling is not a make or brake thing for me. i will say that it should have a bid feature. but then again i bid almost every job different anyway. i would like it to give me cost of materials at least.

but before i buy aspire is there any other nesting software i should look into?

[Mark Bolton]

You can do costing with Cabinetsense BOM export. We dont but should. I dont have any input on aspire vs others as we use Vcarve and do all our 3D work in other titles (Sketchup mostly) and import to Vcarve. As I mentioned before the only things I would be looking for in a nesting option over and above Vcarve would be something that automatically manages drops (cleaning them up after the nest is cut and automatically incorporating the drop into the next job) and possibly some super dynamic ways to setup funky nests but we just dont do enough to bother looking.

[Martin Wasner]

We do very little two sided machining so most generally we will only have a few parts that need to be flipped. Its rare for us so we tend to just fip those few parts that need second side work after theyre cut from the sheet.

Im not sure how I would trust the registration against the pins for cutting two sided flipping an entire sheet without perhaps squaring it up first? Never really thought about it.

We mostly use two sided machining on solid wood furniture or school furniture where you would have counterbores to be plugged on one face and blind dados shelf pins on the interior.

I'm still a ways out before I find out, but a shop a buddy works at, they flip a lot of sheets, he said it's just a matter of pushing it to the pins and it's good to go. I'd bet close to half of my parts will require two sided operation. I don't feel like screwing around with pods, or accidentally grabbing the wrong part for the next phase.

[Mark Bolton]

The only part that I dont understand about flipping an entire sheet (straight out of the lift) is that they are never square. So if you machine to two faces you cant flip and register against the same edges can you?

It would seem so easy to me to simply eliminate all second side machining in your construction details and save all the time of the flip.

What processes do you have that would force you into second side machining.

[Mike Heidrick]

If doing two sided work, one way is to cut holes for registration pins inserted in the material. Drawing has those for each side.

[Mark Bolton]

Agreed on registration pins for two sides on a lot of stuff but on nested cabinet parts you are registering the edge of the sheet against pop up pins on two edges of the sheet and when you flip the entire sheet you cant register against the same two edges that the first side used.

I had always thought youd square the sheet prior to cutting the first side or something I'd you were flipping the entire sheet.

No doubt if the majority of your parts involved two side machining you wouldn't want to be doing it on an individual part basis.

[Gary Campbell]

Most cabinet software programs have a methods to "trim for the pins" to ensure an accurate registration when the sheet is flipped

[Mark Bolton]

Makes total sense