Autodesk recently released an update for the Inventor Nesting utility. This update not only corrected some issues, but it added several new features and enhanced some others.
Nesting Utility Fixed Issues:
- Numerous crashes when extracting DWG files into the Sources dialog box.
- When creating a Nesting Study, the Job QTY is not restricted to 99 anymore.
- Extracted parts from an assembly will set the QTY as 1 if its original quantity is zero.
- Comments entered in the Nesting Study dialog appear in the Nesting Result report.
- Shape QTY doesn’t update to reflect changes to the shape quantity changes in the IAM file.
- Multi-Edit does not work well.
- Sorting does not work by Max X /Max Y in the Create Nest and Edit Nest dialog boxes.
- Total sheet, nesting and remnant cost calculation has been updated and report accurately in nesting study reports.
- Consistent units between nesting documents and associated reports.
Improved Nesting Study Reports:
Before this update nesting reports were simple text files which were hard to view and could not be exported without doing a copy and paste. The reporting functionality has been greatly improved with the use of an HTML format. The HTML report has a built-in print function which contains a Print Preview configuration screen and can use any Windows configured printer. Reports can also be saved in either HTML or PDF format.
The HTML report template can be customized, and a sample customization template is supplied. Templates can easily be switched from the select drop-down at the top of the HTML Report.
Binding and Unbinding of Process Materials and Shape Properties to Nesting results:
Material and nesting shape properties (assigned in the Process Material Library) can be “bound” or “unbound” to the sources components at various times during the nesting process. The default is “Bind All” and can be changed in numerous dialog boxes.
Partial binding is possible by editing the Shape Properties of each source shape. The icons under the Geometry Sources panel indicate these settings.
Support for Source Files from Autodesk Vault:
The location for Source files can be switched between local and network folders and to files inside Autodesk Vault.
Multi-Value Job QTY:
When more than one source of geometric shapes are added to the nesting utility, the ability to define independent quantities per source is available in the Create Nesting Study dialog box.
Improvements to the Layer Mapping for Extracting Source File Geometry:
The new source file Extract Configuration Editor has been improved to allow for much easier configuration of layer and entity control during the source file extraction process. Multiple configurations can be saved and applied to multiple source files as well as being switched dynamically during the nesting process.
Improvements to Layer Mapping for Exporting Nesting Results:
The new Export Configuration Editor makes it much easier to configure nesting results layers and entity control in DXF export files. The export editor dialog box contains a preview panel to view the results of each configuration on the DXF before saving the file. The editor allows creation and switching between export templates to be much easier.
Nesting for Additional Non-Sheetmetal File Types:
The addition of new non-sheet metal file types can now be used in the nesting process making the nesting utility much more versatile. These include:
- Inventor Solids
- Inventor Composites
- Non-Native files converted to the IPT/IAM file format using AnyCad processes.
Be sure to install the Inventor Nesting Utility Update 2019.2 either using the Autodesk Desktop Application or download the update from your Autodesk Account for a more detailed list of the new features and functionality.
