Exclude Components from Nesting

[petestrycharske]

All,

Good afternoon!  I've been working to better understand the Inventor Nesting tool and I can get it close to working for an entire layout that includes many different shapes and thicknesses to nest.  To make things work a bit easier for me, I've decided to utilize a Sheet Metal component for each flat shape, whether it be wood, metal, laminate, etc.  This is all working, but I'm getting lots of files I don't want in my nest, like solid wood legs and Frame Generator tube shapes.  I'd like to get rid of them, or exclude them from the beginning, so I have a few questions.

1. Is there a setting in nesting where I only include Sheet Metal parts?

2. Is there an API for Nesting, so I can write my own iLogic rules / add-in to exclude files from the nest?

3. Has anyone written anything for assemblies, since nesting can only use the "Primary" model state currently, that modifies the "Primary" model state for use with Nesting (i.e. excluding non-sheet metal parts)?

I thought I would post here first, but can post this in the customization forum too.  Please let me know if you have any questions and I'll be happy to clarify the request.  Thanks in advance for any help and have a most blessed day!

Peace,
Pete

[pcrawley]

Good point.  (This isn't an answer sorry - just moral support.)

I'm lucky my workflow creates nestable parts in a separate subassembly - so I never noticed this problem until now. 

I thought setting QTY = 0 would work, but it still nests the item.  Perhaps this could be considered a defect and resolved as such?

(Actually - after unbinding/rebinding - it throws an error saying: "The quantity must be a positive non-zero value."  So the defect would be allowing zero-values in the first place.")