Nesting Questions

[ntraub01]

Good afternoon all,

I am about to mill a 45' long serpentine handrail and matching foot rail between which a 38" piece of 3/8" plexiglass will be mounted. Each finished piece of handrail and matching foot rail is 5" thick and 8" wide.

I am attempting to nest 125ish different pieces all at once. They are all curved pieces of 9 different shapes and I'm trying to nest all of them so the software will figure out the best cut pattern and best use of material. I have the first 12 pieces imported from Illustrator and I have them all grouped together as there are many pieces which have additional milling within the overall profile of that individual piece.

Question 1: Why when I define a group of holes, dados and exterior profile as a GROUP part, does the nesting break that group apart and how can I prevent it from doing this.

Question 2: How can I get the software to ignore duplicate vectors?? There are a couple of pieces in the sandwich that ARE duplicate vectors but I need them to actually be milled and not ignored or disposed of. When I place 12 groups/pieces and hit nest the software throws out all of the duplicate pieces and then nests all of the remaining pieces and parts as individual pieces.

Question 3: Though this isn't a huge issue, is there any way to do a group import into VCarvePro so I don't have to import all 125ish files separately. I can import one layered Illustrator file but all of the grouping is completely ignored and I endup with a HUGE mess of loose vectors.


Thanks in advance for your assistance!

Nicholas

[Kyle Stapleton]

You need to ungroup everything and join open vectors. After that run your nest and it should work.

[Ger21]

2) Use toolpath templates, and put your duplicates on appropriate layers.

3) I believe that there's a batch .dxf import gadget.