calculating wastage of a nest

[bwidow]

Hi all, i do all my nesting for my CNC router in AutoCad 2004. i use a 2400 x 1200 sheet of timber and cut out various shapes. I create a 2400 x 1200 (8x4) template rectangle in AutoCad then nest up all my already drawn dxf files inside the 1200 x 2400 template to fit best utilise spac and minimise waste. Then i export this DXF to my CAM software to program and send to the machine.

What i want to be able to do is calculate the sections not used and see how much of the 1200 x 2400 template would be wastage. Unfortunatley, my CAM software for the router cant do this for me.

I hope this makes sense. I can provide an example dxf if this helps. If i cant do it in Autoad, is there another software i can export the dxf to to do this for me?

Thanks all.

[MSasu]

Which type of entities are your template and respectively the shapes to be cut?

Convert those to regions (REGION command) and with SUTRACT remove the shapes from contour - call AREA command (with Object option) to list the remaining shape's area.

 

Regards,

Mircea

[bwidow]

Hi mate, thanks for the reply, i am going to have a play around with this now but i am not familiar with any of these functions so might take a while.

i have attached an example of what i am working with. the outside shape is my template and resembles a sheet of ply. the inside shapes are what i am cutting. i want to know the remaining area % so i can see what my wastage is. thanks.

250111-9.dxf

[BIGAL]

The answer is 879373.62 I just turned off the internal screw holes etc so only had the external part outlines did a hatch then just listed the hatch, area is given ?

 

 

I would draw the cut outs holes on another layer so you can just turn them off change to one layer at end.

[MSasu]

@BIGAL, the hatch is an interesting approach, never thought of this. For sure this much effective that the solution I proposed.

 

Regards,

Mircea