Les…Do you have any plan to add auto nesting to SheetCam? I’ve considered myNesting, but everyone I talk to is turned off by the subscription model.
Thanks
I am afraid not. Nesting is very complicated and I simply don’t have the resources to write a good nesting function.
Maybe you could work with the myNesting designer. Maybe he could provide a nesting module and you could offer it as an option to SheetCam. I think he has a good idea with a low cost approach to nesting, but soooo many people, myself included, just run from subscription based software.
I thought you had myNesting integrated somehow. I remember seeing a menu item for it, possibly under plugins. Can’t seem to find it now.
At the end of the day it comes down to money. The author of MyNesting needs to make a profit. As nesting is a relatively low volume market he has to charge quite a bit per copy. Not many people who pay $180 for CAM are then going to be willing to pay the same again or more for a nesting module. The nesting appears to be very poor value for money because you don’t see much of the complex programming involved in creating it.
You have to download the plugin from the SheetCam website.
I installed the plug-in, but still don’t see MyNesting anywhere in SheetCam. It did install in the correct folder and I see it there in the plug-in folder, just don’t see any menu items or toolbar buttons for it. I went to App options and tried adding an icon to the toolbar but MyNesting is not there either.
My thought process on the subscription vs sale controversy is that if he offered a stand alone version for less than $200, he would do quite well. I agree that a nesting program for $2000, which seems to be about the norm, has a limited market with the small shop owners, but at $200 it’s a no brainer.
I can see how the subscription model could pay off over time and how some people may like fact that they pay as they go. My experience so far is that I registered and was given one credit for one export. I added some parts to the program, did an export and imported the DXF into SheetCam.
Everything looked good except myNesting flattened the file into one layer. Then while looking at the file is SC, I realized that I had forgotten one part. Went back to myNesting, which still had the same project open, added the part, but when I did another export it wanted to use another credit.
I’ll offer myNesting to customers as a low cost nesting option, but I doubt I’ll use it. A fairly busy shop who did say…5 exports a day would be spending $500 per month. Even at $2000 it would be better in the long run to buy a program. $5 per export sounds cheap until you do the math…or if you only do a few exports a month.
A monthly subscription would be better, which he offers, but his subscription rate is ridiculous.
Hmm, looks like I must have broken the plugin recently. I’ll have a look and see if I can figure out what is going on.
The plugins are now fixed.
Got it. It seems to export the operation or tool path and not the whole part. This is a problem as most of my parts have different layers for different operations. Is there a way to have it export the whole part or multiple parts and preserve the layers.
For instance, I have a simple part with some inside offsets without leads, an inside offset with leads and an outside offset. When I export to myNesting, only the outside offset tool path gets exported.
It only exports the outside cut path. That is all that is needed by MyNesting. When you load the nest back into SheetCam all of your layers will be restored.
Cool…Thanks.