Manual Nesting Editor

The manual editor lets you rearrange a finished layout by hand: drag parts, rotate them, move them between sheets, add or remove sheets, and see the efficiency recompute as you go. Open it with Manual Edit in the results toolbar (available once a run has finished or a saved result is loaded).

The editor works on the nesting result only - it never changes the model.

Moving around

• Pan - middle-mouse drag, hold Space and drag, or the hand tool (H).
• Zoom - mouse wheel at the cursor, or Ctrl+= / Ctrl+- ; Ctrl+0 fits the sheet, Ctrl+1 returns to 100%.
• Sheets - click a card in the left navigator, or PageUp/PageDown.

Selecting and editing

Click a part to select it, Shift or Ctrl+click to add, drag on empty space for a marquee (touching selects), Ctrl+A takes everything on the sheet, Tab cycles.

• Move - drag, or nudge with the arrow keys (1 mm; Shift 10 mm, Alt 0.1 mm).
• Rotate - R and Shift+R turn in 90 degree steps; the inspector has a rotation dropdown.
• Mirror - M, or the inspector checkbox.
• Pin - P marks a part as approved: pinned parts cannot be dragged, rotated, deleted, moved or auto-packed, and survive clearing a sheet. Use it to lock parts you are happy with.
• Duplicate (D) and Delete (Del) change the part count - a duplicate is a genuine extra part to cut, and a deleted part simply is not cut.
• Align and distribute - the align buttons appear with two or more parts selected (Alt+L, Alt+R, Alt+H for center, Alt+T, Alt+B, Alt+V); distributing (Ctrl+Shift+H / Ctrl+Shift+V) needs three. Both count unpinned parts only. Pack bottom-left packs the selected parts around everything already on the sheet.
• Undo and redo - Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y, up to 80 steps, for everything you do in the editor (history is discarded when the editor closes).

Snapping has two independent helpers: a grid (with adjustable size) and edge snapping, which snaps a dragged part to sit exactly one part-spacing away from a neighbour, flush with a neighbour's edge, or against the usable-area edge. Dashed guides show what a part aligned to while you drag, and with Measure on, rulers show the distances to the sheet edges and the nearest neighbouring material.

Sheets

The navigator lists every sheet with its efficiency, a live thumbnail and issue badges. + Add Sheet appends an empty sheet matching the first sheet's size (which matters when a run mixed sheet sizes - use Duplicate on the sheet you want instead); right-clicking a card offers Rename, Duplicate, Clear placements, Move selected here, and Delete.

To move parts between sheets, drag them onto a sheet's thumbnail, use the right-click menu, or pick a destination in the inspector's "Move to sheet".

Issues and applying

Three problems are detected continuously, using the true part outlines rather than bounding boxes:

• Overlap - parts intersect (red).
• Margin - a part sticks past the usable area (orange).
• Spacing - two parts are closer than the run's part spacing (amber), with the actual and required gap shown.

The Issues panel lists every one; clicking an entry jumps to it. You cannot apply while any issue remains - the button is disabled and the count is shown in the header.

Apply Changes (Ctrl+Enter) recomputes efficiency and waste, re-resolves the part labels (so {n} and sheet numbers follow the new arrangement), hands the result back to the nesting dialog, and saves it as a new entry in history. Cancel asks before discarding your edits - but closing the window with its X discards them silently, so apply before you close.

After applying, DXF export, sheet printing and label printing all use the edited layout, but you must re-run them - nothing is re-exported automatically.

One caution: if you nested in Guillotine mode, the cut lines shown and exported still describe the original machine-made layout. Moving parts by hand does not recompute them.

Press ? at any time for the full shortcut list.