Nesting in Rhino & or Autocad

[associated]

I need to find a cheap piece of nesting software to help with boat kits we design. Does anyone have any ideas?

[hespj]

Yes, RhinoNest:

http://www.rhino3d-design.com/rhinonest.htm

[gerald_d]

Hi AMD, have a look at this page (http://www.mechmate.com/mdc/messages/5/24.html) on our (incomplete) website. We nest manually - havn't looked hard for software to nest because this stuff in not so difficult manually.

[gerald_d]

John, you posted while I was typing. Can rhinonest...

- orientate parts to grain direction with some leeway?

- place tabs at spots accessible to a belt sander?

[hespj]

I don't own it Gerald, but am thinking of getting it for the next project.

Looks like orientation can be fixed, allow 180 or 90 degree rotation, or free. No "leeway". (Visions of boats with built in leeway).

I think it just nests, there are no toolpath functions such as tabbing, although there is a command called tab which actually adds a little numbered tab to the side of the object for identification. I could certainly have used that in the past when a pile of almost identical laser cut parts arrive.

As the program is actually working in Rhino I guess one could use Rhino to manually create tabs in the best positions.

[jlawren6]

You might look here also;

www.e-nesting.com (http://www.e-nesting.com)

It's online nesting software that you pay for on a per-use basis. I haven't used it myself yet. Just saw it on CNCZone and took a quick look at it. Seems like it offers a numbers of options and is an intersting idea.

Jon