Understanding nesting optimization
Nesting is all about placing as many parts as possible on the stock metal sheet we are about to cut. It’s a bit like aiming for a Tetris record where the shape of the brick has to conform to all the others to pack everything as close as possible.
However, we don’t really have to manually orient the components on the boundaries of the stock metal sheet, as there are now automatic processes that optimize part placements in just one click.
Saying that, there are two important factors to consider that are strictly interconnected with nesting: sheet format and batch volume. Let’s look at those now.
Sheet format
Sheet format is the easiest variable to optimize – we simply need to consider the size of the metal sheet we want to cut.
As we all know, paper sheets are sold in standard formats such as A4 and A3 and so on. Metal sheets work the same way; there are several standard formats, some bigger and some smaller...
