SHEET HAPPENS III: How to use nesting explorer

Mostly nesting is automatic, but sometimes you need that extra bit of control to do jobs that are out of the ordinary such as samples or prototypes or you just want to get more from each nest.

In this article, I’ll tell you about nesting explorer and its imaginative solutions that can help you work more efficiently, giving you more flexibility and control of how the nesting is done. This extra control will help you reduce production time in the factory and save material.

What is nesting explorer?

The nesting explorer is the way of organizing sub-jobs in the Lantek nesting and machining environment. It is normally located as a band on the left, although it is configurable.

The objective of the explorer is to visualize, in tree form, all the sub-jobs and nests that Lantek organizes, so that you can make decisions and optimize the combinations in the nests to suit the job, thus achieving a significant reduction in cutting length, and consequently, time and the material to be used.

Nesting explorer works semi-automatically, organizing itself to match the nests that you create either when you do it automatically with the "do all" function, selecting sub-jobs to be included in "active sub-job" or you just do it with the “one sheet” function, if you prefer to do one nest at a time.

In either case, the browser will arrange everything as the following example.

● Machine - Material - Thickness

○ Sheet metal - Format

■ Product 1

■ Product 2

For example:

● Punching machine 1 - Inox - 2mm

○ Ref. Sheet metal - 3000x1500

■ Product 1

■ Product 2

○ Ref. Sheet metal - 3000x1250

■ Product 1

● Punching machine 1 - Galvanized - 1.2mm

○ Ref. Sheet metal - 3000x1500

■ Product 3

This is how the nesting explorer works.

The nesting explorer works autonomously, representing the sub-jobs and their nests. In fact, when you click on "do all", Lantek starts this complex task, which requires a large number of calculations to achieve optimal nesting. The results are represented in the explorer, one after the other.

If you have correctly configured your Lantek installation for your production environment, and you have properly defined the criteria both for your machines and raw materials you use, the "do all" function will leave the job almost 80% done. This is why it is so important to invest the time it takes to get your Lantek software fully configured on installation.

If, despite everything, you are a bit of a control freak (as I am), and you prefer to control what Lantek does and how you want the work to develop, you can interact directly with the nesting explorer and with the contextual menus that appear every time you right-click on an element in the explorer.

Interact with the explorer to develop the work in phases.

When you right-click on a sub-job, which is the one with "Machine - Material - Thickness" and usually appears with a bolder font, the following appears:

• New sheet: It loads an empty sheet for you to nest manually.
• Save: Saves the sub-job.
• Delete all sheets of the sub-job: Deletes, literally, all of the sub-job nests. This is what usually happens when you nest automatically and you don’t like the result or it doesn’t match your way of working.
• Automatic nesting: This function is very practical. It will generate all the sheets necessary to nest the products corresponding to that sub-job. Here I usually first lock the smaller products to make the system nest the larger ones first. I then unlock the smaller products and use them to fill in the gaps.
• Pre-nested: Not a function I use often
• Create Sub-job: Creates a new sub-job.
• Expand All: Expands the entire tree, including parts, of that sub-job.
• Collapse All: Collapses the entire tree, including parts. These two are best used when you only have a few sub-jobs.
• Configure Nest Browser: It’s pretty obvious.

Apart from the sub-job context menu, there is also another context menu for nesting, which is the one that appears as “Sheet - Format”. Clicking on it, the following appears:

• Delete: Deletes the nesting.
• Cut: Not a function I use often
• Remove All Parts: Removes all parts from the sheet. I usually use this function when I don’t like the result of the nesting, and I need to reframe it in a different way.
• Open all the pieces: I find it very useful. It opens the geometry of all the parts that are in the nest, so that you can review and modify what you need to.
• Change data: I use it continuously. Here you can change the data in the sheet such as the margins and the dimensions. You even have three fields to add comments in case you want to leave a note for the engineers when they open the job in the workshop.
• Change quantity: Essential for me. Indicates the number of sheets to be machined with the same nest. Lantek automatically calculates the maximum number of sheets, taking into account the stock of sheets of that format, and the maximum number of pieces to be manufactured. With this function you can change it and decide to make fewer sheets. You may plan, for example, to make another combination in a later nest or, you want to reserve pieces for yourself.
• Automatic nesting: Lantek will calculate the nesting in that specific sheet automatically. I usually use it to see what it is preparing, serving as a starting point when planning a special nest.
• Redo a sheet: Opens a menu on the right side of the screen, where you can change various parameters about the nesting, such as changing the distance between the pieces or telling the system if you prefer a horizontal or vertical orientation in the nesting, to give two examples of the most used options.

In conclusion

It is intuitive and practical. With the nest explorer you will have a very intuitive and easy-to-use interface, which will allow you to create nests quickly and easily. While giving you control and flexibility when you need it.

It has complete tools at the click of a button. From the explorer, you will be able to use tools such as automatic or manual nesting, redo sheets, machining, etc. Advanced features that will save you tons of time at work and you can view the results of your changes in real time.

With the explorer, you will have a map of everything giving you complete control of how the parts will be cut. This will allow you to make decisions on the most effective, optimal and productive methods, before sending them to the cutting and punching machines.

That’s all.

I hope you liked the article and were able to discover new things about the nest explorer. Good luck and see you again in the next one.