Not a deal breaker and I guess I could drag and drop everything the way I want. But that defeats the purpose of it being an automatic nesting function. We run a Job shop, we might have 20 different jobs out of the one material. The quantities would be 10 pcs on some, 100 on another. 700 pcs is a large run. Then its on to the next material which will have a totally different mix of sizes and quantities. If I was going to put that much effort into it, I might as well just draw each sheet in autocad and get it done that way. Again, it sort of defeats the purpose of speed and timing.

That's exactly where it was. Like I said, no real way to center nest the items though, is there?

If the quantities were proportional, that would be good. Making three or more drawings separate from the machine greatly diminishes the cost savings of saying "here are three circles, I need X, Y, and Z pieces of each......go." We found the single checkbox to do the nesting inside the circles which leads to another question. It only give options to nest in four directions; upper left, lower left, upper right and lower right. not on center. Not sure if that is a big deal when we put the files into the Omax or not being as a laser plasma or waterjet will need the lead in tail towards the scrap side of the part. Which brings me to the next issue, not mastercam related. Omax software seems to have a nesting option, but it is very basic and is more of an array option then a nesting option. The trainer said that it will not flip and move complex shapes to utilize the whole sheet. He suggested that a third party software would do a better job of nesting. sure, $250,000 on a new machine and why not throw $13,000 at sigmanest software. Another thing for the programmer to learn and use. We currently have Mastercam for our turning and milling haas machines, so it is here and already paid for. The nesting will most likely do the job for the basic things we need, just wish it had more options.

We have just purchased a new Omax WaterJet and was looking into our existing Mastercam Software to handle some of the nesting duties. Here is the sample list we are working towards: Sheet is rectangular 48 Inches by 96 Inches Part one is a ring Outer Diameter is 17.875 Inches and the inner Diameter is 14.5 Inches quantity is 700 Part two is a circle 10 Inches diameter with a .5 Inch center hole quantity is 100 Part three is a circle 12 Inches diameter with a .375 Inch Center Hole quantity is 100 Geometry nesting is doing it's thing, but is not using the 14.5 Inch center from Part One. Is there a way for the software to realize the center can be used for another circle? In this instance, it may be irrelevant being as the 700 quantity of Part one dictates the amount of sheets and part two and part three will fit into the voids without the centers being used, but long term, we would like to use this philosophy.