Nesting

Nesting packs your panels onto sheets for cutting: it decides how many sheets you need and exactly where each part sits, then hands the result to the CNC as DXF, to the shop as printed sheets, and to the bench as labels.

Open it from the Cabybara toolbar or menu ("Nesting").

• Settings - sheet sizes, spacing, solvers, grain
• DXF export and sheet printing - the shop output
• Manual editor - rearranging a layout by hand
• Label Printer - printed part labels

Before you nest

Every panel needs two things: an assigned stock (panels without one are skipped silently) and a face stamped by the Face Painter (missing faces block the run with a list of the offending panels). Grain comes from the panel or its stock - see Grain and mirroring, which is the setting that most often decides whether a job fits on one sheet less.

Running a nest

1. Choose the scope (whole model or current selection) and the stock material - one run covers one stock.
2. Check the sheet sizes table: sizes, quantities (blank means unlimited) and grain.
3. Adjust settings if needed - the defaults are sound for a CNC router.
4. Press Generate Nesting.

The run reports its phase, a progress bar and elapsed time, and can be cancelled: cancelling shows the partial layout placed so far, which you can inspect but should regenerate before cutting.

Reading the result

The stats bar summarizes the run: sheets used, parts placed out of the total, efficiency, waste, and counts of anything that needs attention. Each sheet is drawn below with its parts, and buttons for Preview, DXF, Labels and Print.

On a sheet, each part is colored by its parent cabinet, outlined in orange or blue for its outside or inside face, hatched to show grain direction, and overlaid with its machining (grooves, holes, engravings with their depth, and cut-through operations). Hovering shows the part details; clicking selects and zooms that panel in SketchUp.

Efficiency is placed area over usable area (the sheet minus the edge margin). In True Shape mode the headline figure uses the real part outlines net of holes, so a sheet full of perforated panels reports a lower number - that is expected. In Rectangular mode the headline figure uses bounding boxes instead, while the per-sheet percentages always use true area, so the two do not match in that mode.

Two lists can appear, and they mean different things:

• Unplaced Parts - the part did not fit: the sheets available were too small, the quantity ran out, or grain locked it out of the orientation that would have fitted. Add or enlarge sheets, raise a quantity, reduce spacing, or relax grain.
• Strict True-Shape Failures - the part's geometry could not be read reliably, so it was excluded from the layout and the DXF before packing started. This is a modeling problem to fix on the panel, not a setting to tune.

Shape Warnings flag parts that nested with a simplified outline.

Saving and history

With Auto-save Results on (the default) every run - and every manual edit you apply - is written to a .cnest file in the plugin's history folder, keeping the 20 most recent. History lists both this session's runs and the saved files, newest first; Load opens a .cnest from anywhere.

Loading a result restores its layout and the settings it was run with, so exports match the original run.

Saved results are a snapshot: nothing checks that the model still matches, so re-nest after changing panels rather than exporting an old result.