This function enables the user to generate nesting layout using more than one blank outline. When defining  the blank outline, the user should click OK button or the middle button to accept each profile selection after selecting other blank outline. When all the blank outlines are selected, the user can click OK button or the middle button to exit the SELECT LINE dialog box. The other setup operations are similar to the one of One-up nesting and Two-up nesting.

In this function, the Manual dialog box is different from the one in One-up nesting and Two-up nesting, as illustrated in Figure 6.6.25. In Multi Blanks function, the Master Group is activated to enable the user to select one or more than two (including two) parts as the master blank. The master blank is mainly used to control the step size during nesting. Therefore, we usually select the blanks with greater size as the master blanks.

Figure 6.6.25  Manual dialog box

MASTER GROUP

This function enables the user to select one or more than two parts from the defined outlines and add them to the master group. For multiple blanks nesting, the user is allowed to select two or more parts to add to the master group, and the other parts are slave parts. During nesting, we usually select the parts with greater size as the master parts. By default, the parts with greater size will be added to the list automatically.

Note: After entering the Manual option, since the program uses the defined X-Y and Angle steps to calculate nesting layout in auto nesting, the user may use the default parameters to avoid long calculation time. These parameters can be reduced gradually to obtain more accurate nesting result.

ADD

This function enables the user to select parts to add to the master group list. Click this button, the Select Blank dialog box illustrated in Figure 6.6.26. The user may select any part to add to the group list and the selected part is highlighted. The other parts are displayed in the part drop-down list as slave parts.

Figure 6.6.26  Select blank dialog box

DELETE

This function enables the user to delete parts from the list. Select parts in the list, and click this icon to delete the parts directly from the list. The removed parts will be used as slave parts for nesting calculation.

SELECT BLANK

This function enables the user to select master and slave blanks respectively, to perform operations such as translation, rotation and mirroring, and adjust the position between blank nesting manually during multiple parts nesting. Once a blank is selected, the outline of this blank turns to grey. Refer to Section 6.6.6 for a detailed description about this function.

MANUAL

This function enables the user to manually position the blanks through translation, rotation and/or mirroring.

OK

Once the manual adjustment of nesting is setup, click this button to perform nesting. After adding the master parts, the program will automatically perform nesting calculation on the master parts, and insert the slave parts for calculation. Click the OK button to confirm the nesting result and exit.

In addition, for Multi Blanks Nesting, the master blank is not rotated by default in order to save the calculation time. The slave blank rotates about itself and translate towards the master blank. The program will automatically find a result with the maximum material utilization from all the calculation values.

If the user rotates the master blank, the master blank is rotated during nesting calculation in order to obtain the optimized nesting result. However, the calculation time will increase accordingly.