Grain Painter

The Grain Painter inspects and sets each panel's grain direction, which controls how the panel may rotate during nesting. Activate it from the Cabybara toolbar or menu ("Grain Painter").

The four states

• Along Length - grain runs along the panel's longest dimension.
• Along Width - along the middle dimension.
• No Grain - free rotation and mirroring in nesting.
• Auto - no stored value: the panel follows its assigned stock's grain (an Auto panel with no stock resolves to Along Length - Auto is not "free").

A grain set with this tool is marked manual and survives stock swaps; setting a panel back to Auto makes it follow the stock again.

Painting

Hover any panel: it highlights in its state color - blue Along Length, purple Along Width, gray No Grain, amber Auto - with white grain arrows drawn on the faces (an X cross for No Grain). The tooltip and status bar name the state and its nesting effect.

• Click cycles Auto, Along Length, Along Width, No Grain, Auto.
• Alt+Click sets Along Length directly; Ctrl+Click Along Width.
• Drag paints the first click's resulting value across panels.
• Shift+Click applies that value to every panel of the hovered type in the hovered cabinet (one undo step).
• Shift (hold) - model overview: every nestable panel tinted by state with counts in the status bar; hardware is excluded. Note that Shift also arms the whole-type click.
• Measurements box: type l, w, n or a to set the hovered panel.

Every change is one undo step per panel (one for a whole-type batch). Hardware parts are blocked - grain does not apply to them.

What it means downstream

With the nesting dialog's grain mode at its default (Respect), a panel with grain locks its rotation and is aligned to the sheet's grain axis (rotated 90 degrees when the axes differ); No Grain rotates and mirrors freely. The tool warns when a manual grain sits on a grainless stock ("lock is wasted"). The nesting dialog's grain mode and sheet grain direction can override grained panels per run (No Grain panels always stay free, even under Force length), and part labels can print the grain arrow. The Production Report shows the same arrows in its cut lists.