Nesting Circles

[Gavin]

I'm having trouble nesting large circles.

 

I have a sheet that is 1200mm wide, 2400mm long. I'm nesting circles 450mm diameter.

 

Mastercam seems to want to nest parts into a corner. In this case, it would be better if the first circle went in the lower left corner, then the second circle in the upper left corner, because then the third circle could nest in the gap between the first two circles, and so on.

 

My ascii art isn't too good, but I hope this gives the idea:

 

This would be good:

 

O.O

.O.

O.O

 

instead of:

 

.O

O.

O.

 

(I had to use periods instead of spaces, cos the bulletin board was stripping out spaces)

 

Is there a setting that would accomplish this, or is this a limitation of the nesting algorithm?

[Roger Peterson]

If you have true shape nesting you can set your "fill direction" and "nesting corner", if you are using basic nesting I don't believe there is anything you can do other than nest manually.

 

 

HTH

[Gavin]

yeah, I have true shape nesting.

 

You can set your nesting corner and fill direction, but this doesnt help. what would help is if the nesting corner oscillated between one corner and another in the nesting algorithm.

[Gregory Smuk]

in the nesting preview page it gives "results" (drop down menu) sometimes it shows different results that the nesting has found....try this and see if it works

[Gavin]

I cant recall ever seeing the results number go above 1.

[Roger Peterson]

if all you are nesting is circles, there is a chook called gridpock.dll that will do a gravity fill. Let it create the arcs and then use Roger Martins arc multiedit chook to modify them to the correct size all at once.

[Colin Gilchrist]

Gavin,

 

It took a bit but you can get an option that sort of works. Create the three arcs in Mastercam in the orientation you want, two in the upper left and lower left corners, one in the middle in-between the others. In your sheet properties set your fill direction to horizontal.

 

In the parts tab, add a "chained cluster" and chaing all three holes. This will cause Mastercam to look at the three arcs as a unit and nest them from left to right across the sheet. It is annoying that you have to actually nest the three manually, but it will work.

 

HTH,

[Colin Gilchrist]

Gregory,

 

The only way you will get more than 1 sheet result is if you need more than one sheet to fit all the parts onto. If the "create necessary quantity" check box is active then Mastercam will create as many sheets as you need to fully nest all the parts you've selected. It doesn't allow you to look at different nest possibilities.

 

HTH,

[Gavin]

Roger, thanks for the tip on the C-hook. Unfortunately, the circles have holes drilled in them as well. Its not an open source C-Hook is it?

 

Colin, I will try your suggestion on the next time round - I never thought of using clusters. It wont be ideal, because there are a variety of circle sizes in one order (I know, this isn't as basic as I made it sound in the original post ) but I'm sure it will help.

 

Also, I lied about the results number thing - it does go above one. What I *meant* was, I've never seen it give a second set of 'results'. It just nests the quantities I asked it to onto the number of sheets required - its not like it has "option 1, or option 2" type of thing.

[Gavin]

surely I should be able to delete my own posts? oh well. I posted something here by mistake, so just ignore this.