By Peter Maxwell-Stewart
This is a follow on blog to my previous nesting utility blog. It tackles the issue of having multiple parts of the same material, but which require different packaging ID’s due to sheet size. For instance 8 x 4 sheets and 10 x 5 sheets both made out of 18mm Ply or MDF but we obviously want to keep costs down and utilise the most cost effective sheet choice. The problem with loading in the nest direct from the Inventor assembly is you have no choice over the packing ID. It either creates one for you or chooses a default one that’s already been set up in your template with no option of changing it. This has been raised with Autodesk as a concern and is currently with development as a future consideration, but for now I have put together this work around using ilogic to automate the process as much as possible.
Happy Designing!
Template sheet metal part with iLogic code used in Video.