Inventor Nesting Pull: DXF Pull

00:13

There is another way of using Nesting utility,

00:16

and the workflow I'm demonstrating here is to start from an empty nesting document and bring in source files like DXF.

00:26

But this could also be IPT files or IM files.

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The files that come in have no material assigned.

00:34

They use the default configuration and they use the unit from the document, but you can override it and you can actually scale the DXF files.

00:45

Here, for this demo, we are not scaling so I return to default here.

00:52

So these are the shapes that were imported.

00:57

There is one of the parts that needs to be re-extracted.

01:05

Next, we are going to look at the Nest Properties and we are going to change the quantity because we don't have a bill of material in the DXF file.

01:14

So we just make assumptions on the quantity here about being Quantity 3.

01:24

The material I start from scratch here.

01:27

And I bring in the wood materials from Inventor.

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And these are five materials.

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I can change the name of the materials to something more understandable like Birch, Cherry, et cetera.

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These are the materials that are associative with Inventor, so whenever Inventor changes the values, these materials will follow.

01:55

But I can overwrite certain properties like density, I can work with a lighter density material,

02:02

which is indicated by the yellow, that orange background.

02:06

I can reset it to the originally, original Inventor material by syncing it again.

02:17

As this dialogue shows us, none of the materials have been assigned yet to the DXF parts.

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That's what we will do in the next step.

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So we will assign the Birch material to each and every DXF file.

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Also note that we auto-zoom to the shape while doing this.

02:37

Also note that we use the default configuration file for import.

02:42

The color is a little bit off for birch material.

02:45

So what I'm doing here is to go back in the material library,

02:50

and change the color of the material to something that is more closer to the real material.

02:57

These are still placeholders for the real material.

03:01

This is not the real material color, but it's just a color that helps you distinguish between different materials.

03:12

The next step is to create the nest.

03:14

Of course, we use completely the default values here.

03:20

And you will see that we create a nest with an efficiency of 76% on a single sheet.

03:30

The next step is to create a new extract configuration file to bring in additional DXF files.

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So, we edit the configuration files, we add an extra one.

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We give it a special name like Custom Configuration 1.

03:48

We also set it as the active one and we bring in the file that we are intending to extract.

03:59

So this is an extra DXF file again, which has some interesting layers.

04:06

And we previewed the file.

04:09

So there are some ventilation holes in there that I want to get rid of.

04:15

There is also a labeling portion at the bottom.

04:18

So the ventilation holes are on the ventilation layer.

04:23

And I assign that to the junk purpose which eliminates the ventilation holes.

04:30

The other thing I want to do is, I have that green cutout there, which is in the cutout layer.

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I want to avoid nesting parts in there.

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So I assign it as a non-nestable entity.

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I then set that configuration file as default and bring in that extra DXF file with that new configuration.

04:58

I assign also the birch material to that part so that it shows up in my list.

05:06

As you can see, there are a couple of layers that are displayed.

05:11

I can either display that cutout as a hole or I can fill up that hole.

05:18

I prefer to keep it filled up.

05:21

So I'll reset that check box so that I really know that this is an area that I cannot go and use for nesting.

05:31

The fabrication info can be turned off, which turns off the labeling here at the bottom.

05:36

You can turn it back on, of course, in the object visibility.

05:42

So now that I've identified the part I want to bring it into existing nest.

05:48

So I edit the nest and I use the shape to nest selection arrow here and select the part.

05:58

I change the quantity from 3 to 2 to just keep it within the sheet size.

06:08

And still, I have an overflow here on a third sheet.

06:12

And that has all to do with the fact that I'm not using that cutout area.

06:22

Another way of changing the display is to go in the options.

06:27

There is a fabrication area where you can turn off the edge text and the edge box on the shapes.

06:35

If you do that, you see the blue text at the bottom disappear.

06:39

Sometimes that text gets in the way, but in this case, the text is proportionally the correct size.

06:48

So we leave it on.

06:56

I now create a second configuration file to demonstrate the use of the cutout as an area that can be nested in.

07:06

So I paste the existing configuration, make it active.

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And now for that cutouts layer, I assign it to Nestable Entities or Nestable Contours.

07:23

The preview wouldn't give me any clue here.

07:26

So I'm not even using the preview, I set that configuration file number 2 active and I now use that file here as well in the sources dialogue.

07:40

The result is that after re-extraction, you will see that the cut out now really becomes a hole that I can use for nesting.

07:53

The existing nest is not up to date yet.

07:56

So I have to recalculate it and you will see that.

08:03

Now I go from three sheets to two sheets because some of the smaller parts can be nested in that cutout area.

08:13

The sheet can be exported to DXF as usual.

08:17

And I want to show you the result in AutoCAD.

08:25

We create here a couple of layers, 0134, 6 and 251.

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And each of these layers can be turned off.

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So you could eliminate like layer...

08:45

Layer 4 here has that that cyan rip in there that I would call an Edge Data.

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Layer...

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and layer 251 contains the dimensions and the extra text.

09:02

So you can turn that off as well.

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The other thing you can do with the nest is to bring it into a 3D model.

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Here I use an assembly with default options.

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I just want to show you this, that you finally will see the wood material show up in its real glory.