Parts tab

Use Add to add a part for nesting. This can be an already tooled up .fx file or any 2D or 3D file that Flux can import and convert to a sheet metal part.These files will then be tooled up as explained in the Part Workflow section.

The Add Assembly button is used to add a complete 3D assembly. Flux will select the sheet metal parts from the assembly and add them into the nesting job. The quantities for the individual components of the assembly are set to produce one quantity of the complete assembly.

The Add Layout button is used to import a DXF file containing a fully nested sheet, and decompose it back into a nesting job.

The Import CSV button is used to load a nesting job definition from a CSV (comma separated values) file. The file should have a specific format with 8 columns as explained in the tooltip below:

Save Parts is used to save the selected parts as .FX files. When you start the nesting job with geometry files (like DXF, GEO, 3D data), these are tooled up automatically when added to the Parts list. This button can be used to save the tooled up versions of these parts so they can be reused in other nesting jobs.

The Re-Tool All is used to recompute the tooling for all the parts in the job. It is useful after you make some changes to the machine settings, or to the settings for this particular nesting job, to ensure that all the parts are using the new settings.

The Quantity is the required quantity of the part. You can enter a simple number here, or a range like 20 - 30. This means that at least 20 copies of this part will be nested, but no more than 30. Flux is free to nest any quantity between these two values to maximize nesting efficiency, but will never start a new sheet just to nest parts beyond the minimum quantity.

Parts are nested in increasing order of Priority, if different priority values are set for different parts. However, Priority = 0 is treated as a special case - these parts have the lowest priority.

Part Grain Pref is used to set up the grain direction of the part if it is important. If it is set to a value other than None, that will constrain the angles at which the part can be rotated by the nesting engine. (For this to work correctly, you must also specify the grain direction of the sheets in the Sheets tab).

The Group value is a hint to the nesting engine - Flux will try to keep parts with the same group value together on the same sheet, where possible.

If the Twinline switch is turned ON for a part, the nesting engine will try to use common-line cutting for this part (the part is common-lined only with other copies of itself). Here’s an example where a nearly rectangular part uses common-line cutting in both the vertical and horizontal directions: