Best way for Flat Pack layout and create Cut Sheets?

[Anonymous]

Working with dimensional lumber and plywood.

After I design a piece of furniture I need to lay it out into 96" boards and 96" x 48" sheets to see how much material to purchase.

I've been doing this in Fusion by rotating all the Bodies into the same plane (Top) and then viewing down from the top.

For plywood for example, I draw a 96 x 48 rectangle and move the Bodies into the rectangle.

Simple enough.  Very visual, works ok, but can lead to errors.

I know there are CAM solutions with packing and nesting algos, but for one off projects it's overkill in cost, learning curve, troubleshooting and complexity.

Is there a better way to do this in Fusion?

That is, estimate the amount of material that all Bodies in a Plan will need given the dimensions of standard new materials and existing off-cut materials.  For example, if I have an old piece of plywood left over from an old project cut into an "L" shape, most standard packing software assumes that I am using new sheet goods materials perfectly sized at 96x48 or 96x49 and it makes no sense to throw out material just because software cannot understand an irregular parameter from the real world.

The most pressing problem I've been having is with human data transfer error.  I can lay out my Bodies into rectangles and then screen capture with Snag-it and print them out, but then it's a manual process to transfer the dimensions to the image capture.  Do this for 50+ bodies on a project and human error has bitten me more than once.  Cutting parts too small as I transpose 25 3/8 to 23 5/8 instead.

Preventing the errors would be really nice.  I can see how Fusion Drawings can do this with the dimensions.  But the Drawings don't have an obvious (to me anyway) way of easily rotating and repositioning components onto a rectangle or polygon shape background that can represent the dimensions of material stock.  This is why I've devolved to using Snag-it as a screen capture from the Plan.

Detecting transposition errors is just stare and compare - but across 50+ bodies, detection is a problem when I need to move swiftly into building instead of spending weeks manually searching for errors on the computer.

How do you Best perform material layout in Fusion?

How can I get accurate material layout Drawings from Fusion that nest into dimensional stock material constraints?

Is it possible for Fusion to accommodate saw kerf width and end squaring cuts as well?

[TrippyLighting]

You should work components not with bodies. Maybe if you can share a design and explain your troubles in a screencast, this would be much easier to answer.

[mattsshop]

 HI claybuddy,

                I imagine you have searched nesting and found that Fusion does not yet support that (soon I hope). There is an add in that you can play with called NESTER, but it is still not automatic. I do the same thing you are describing for hotel furniture that I build when I need 75 to 100 of the same piece of furniture.

               For now my workflow is to design in Fusion so I can use equations to drive my designs when dimensions change in the rooms. After I make my designs I project a sketch on the "Z up side" of the part and then save those sketches out as DXF files and name them as my parts, then I import them into Vectric Aspire for nesting on sheets or boards. Aspire is a little pricey but I also think that Vectric Vcarve Pro (les than half the price of Aspire) can do nesting. Aspire handles nesting very well, but I am looking forward to using Fusion for my nesting as soon as they implement it.

Thanks,

Matt

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the reply and suggested workflow.

[lichtzeichenanlage]

Perhaps this might help you. It's not a tool for drawing, but it might help you somehow, too.

You can find the plugin here.