OptiNest is a stand alone nesting optimisation solution. However, it combines very well with PolyBoard which we’ll show you in this video.
Design your furniture in PolyBoard and send the parts to OptiNest to create the optimised nesting maps to run your CNC machine with minimal material waste.
This nesting configuration is very efficient because the CNC cuts the parts and machines them in one operation.
To begin, open your project in PolyBoard. Click on File then > Post Processor Export and choose the OptiNest post processor you need. For our example, we’ll choose OptiNest VCarve. Next select a location to output the parts, such as the Desktop.
Click OK when the PP Report pops up and OptiNest will automatically open up. Now we can see the parts on the left grouped for each material.
Next click on the Windows menu and select a different generic 19mm material. Lots of the parts for this material have machining which you can see on each individual part here as well.
Now all that is needed is to click on the Optimise icon at the top of the screen, and click OK in a few seconds, once it’s finished optimising. We can now see the parts placed on our stock of panel materials. In this example we’ve used 4 panels, which are listed at the top of the screen. We can click through them and see the optimised nesting maps for each displayed in the center screen.
If we click on the Deduct Panels icon at the top of the screen, our stock of panels will be reduced by those we’ve used in our optimization, and any usable off-cuts will be added to our stock for the next optimisation. Once we have clicked the icon, then click on Yes.
Next click on the Edit Panels icon at the top of the screen to view the results. The initial stock of panels amount will have lowered in number, and we can see the 2 off-cuts left over from our optimisation that have been added to the stock we can use next time.
Next you can click on the File menu and > Labels Preview to see the labels that you can print off for each part.
You can also click on the File menu > DXF Export option, to output DXF files of the nested parts, with machining, to run your CNC machine.
As you can hopefully now see, the process is extremely quick and efficient.