Customer Drawings (DXF)

Nest the DXF files your customers send you, with no 3D model. Add one file or many, say how many of each part you need, its material and its thickness, and then use Nest, cut paths, cut time and the quote exactly as you would with the parts of a model.

Step by Step

1. Open Nest and press Customer drawings....
2. Press Add DXF files... and pick one or more files. Pick the units of the files if you know them, or leave Units: from the file. Each file keeps its own units in the strip above the list, so a millimetre file and an inch file can sit in one list.
3. Each drawing is read and listed. Every closed outline is a part and the closed shapes inside it are holes. A drawing that holds several parts gives a row for each.
4. Set the Quantity, Material and Thickness of each part. Thickness takes 0.25, 1/4, 6 mm or a steel gauge such as 11 ga. The cut table and the quote need it.
5. Press Open Nest and run it. The customer parts nest together with any flat parts of a model you have open, on separate sheets for each material and thickness.
6. Preview the cut paths, read the cut time, and add the sheets and the machine time to a quote, as for any nest.

What Is Read

• Lines, arcs, circles, ellipses, splines, polylines (with curved segments) and blocks, including blocks inside blocks, scaled, turned or repeated.
• Inches or millimetres. The file usually says which. When it does not, StepFile.com guesses from the size and says it guessed: check the size in the list and pick the units if it is wrong.
• Notes, dimensions, centre lines, hidden lines, borders and bend lines are left out. Type layer names in Cut layers to cut only those layers.

What Is Reported

Problems are written in plain words in the window and in the answer an AI gets. A part with a problem is listed but not nested, and it cannot be switched on until the drawing is fixed.

• Open lines. An outline that does not close is reported with the size of the gap and where it is. Gaps up to a quarter of a millimetre are closed for you and noted.
• Partial drawings. When some lines of a drawing do not close, the shapes that did close are listed but start switched off, with a caution on the row. Check the size and the holes against the drawing, then switch them on if they are right. The lines that did not close are left out.
• Crossing or touching outlines, and shapes that cross themselves such as a bow-tie, cannot be cut and are named.
• Lines drawn twice are kept once and noted.
• No thickness. The part still nests, and a note says to set it.

With AI

The same steps are available to an AI connection: add a drawing from its text, check one without adding it, list the parts, change quantity, material, thickness or on/off, and remove parts. Each change can be undone, and so can a change of a file's units (fab.dxf_unit). A big drawing does not have to go through the chat: upload it once with upload_model and add it by its model_id, with the same size limits as the window. Then run Nest as usual.

Common Problems

• The size is wrong by 25.4. The units were guessed wrong. Change the Units of that file in the strip above the list. The parts keep their quantity, material and thickness.
• A part is greyed out. Its drawing has a problem. Read the red or amber text on its row. A caution means the part is off until you check it and switch it on; a problem means the drawing must be fixed in your CAD program and added again.
• The list is empty after I reload the page. The list lives in the page. Add the files again.
• A DWG file. DWG is not read. Save it as an ASCII DXF first.