Are the tools there solid or just an after thought? It’s a hella expensive plugin. I need Rhino nesting software for work, it’s either RhinoNest, RhinoCAM Nest or Mosaix. I’m learning toward RN due to the grasshopper integration but that isn’t included in the trial so I can’t accurately gauge it’s value.
You can generate a svg file. This file can be loaded and processed with SVGNest (open source).
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Hi Wespor,
i have bought RN a few mouths ago, i am doing Facede works. it was useless for me!. It is not supporting different board sizes at the same time. U can use just one type of board for nesting. Then i had sent an e mail to them they said that it support multiple board when u use stuck! i did so then i saw that is using board in a que that u define in the stuck list. So i think they need to work over RN much more. İ do nut recomment u if u need to use multiple boards for nesting.
Was doing that before I started exhausting free trials. I do a little too much nesting for that now, upwards of 40 sheets a day. I’m a digital fabricator, laying things out for laser cutting and cnc routing is half my job.
What kind of geometry? Is it only 2D curves or also 3D geometry?
I find the nesting function inside Vcarve/Aspire to be quite fast and useful, but that’s outside of Rhino so requires extra export/importing time.
Ended up biting the bullet and getting RhinoNest, ouch. I’ll report back in a few weeks on how well it’s working for me, a lot of the grasshopper functionallity was removed and is being reworked, that’s a bummer because that’s what I was looking for the most but we’ll see. Hoping it’s going to be in the R6 update.
In regards to svgnest and vcarve nesting (which I do have vcarve pro) it really depends on the scale. I burn through a lot of materials for my various employers and clients. Some of it is just plywood but also corian, impact foams, aluminum and plastics like HDPE. I can’t afford to have waste, missing parts or missing labels on intricate jobs. RhinoNest or RhinoCAM Nest were an inevitability for me.
I think for general purposes RhinoCAM is better, you get the inclusion of vcarve grade CAM AND nesting software built in for the same price as RhinoNest. They have no plans for grasshopper integration though and that’s where I see my career going, being able to generate the parts and nest them with parameters sounds groovy. RhinoNest is NOT there right now but I hope will be.
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Thanks for the feedback on this!
I’m very much interested in seeing the comparison between Vcarve and RhinoNest on your projects, if possible. I don’t really have a lot of issues with the nesting function in Vcarve (which includes lots of parts with labels as well) so I’m curious to see how RhinoNest is better. Maybe I’m missing out on something. When I go over the features on the Rhinonest website it seems like I got some of them covered with grasshopper definitions that do the same.
Well from outside the grasshopper perspective, I like the labeling functionality better, it will place a single curve number on each part, adjusting the size and angle as needed. It has a mass offset command I like too, for setting laser cutting kerf tolerance on the inside or outside of all parts simultaneously. I’m sure you could do both in GH but that’s beyond my skill, my mass offset command was a little sketchy, due to curve direction I wouldn’t always get an outside offset on the parts, there were always ones I had to manually readjust.
The slicing is pretty much what we can do already in Rhino and GH but I do like the angled ability, not sure how I would apply that to fabrication but it’s interesting, it also has the nesting and labeling function.
The 3D to 2D part nesting is convenient as well, I couldn’t get a script to do that. I was always exploding > unrolling > dupborder’ing or 3D rotating > exploding > dupborder’ing 3D objects to get their CP profiles. Their script looks for the widest surface of any solid and orients that down.
All cool stuff but still not worth the $$ unless they add all the grasshopper tools back in. What I really want to do is screw with the nesting backend, get it to randomize parts in a more (or less) controlled fashion before nesting to create patterns. Like rotating all parts a random degree before nesting with part rotation off. Bet that would come up with some interesting, if chaotic results.
But yeah, GH is the seller for me, generating parts via parameters with a random sampling and nesting them in real time.
EDIT: Looking at your work though (nice website) I’d prob recommend RhinoCam Pro, if you could swing it, it has pretty good nesting built in along with advanced 3 axis tooling VCarve can’t hold a candle to. Got to use it briefly at my last full time job for mould making, Turns your router into a surgeon’s scalpel. Mostly what I do now is remote, sending files to fabshops elsewise I problly would have gotten that, they have no-interest payment plans that are pretty sweet.
I’m sorta anti V-Carve these days, anti-anything that takes you out of Rhino. I got spoiled with my Trotec laser, cutting or engraving directly from Rhino, tweaking things. It’s addictive. If I ever get a router myself that’s the experience I want.
For single curve letters/nummbers I use the Fabtools plugin for grasshopper, though I have to say they haven’t been updated in a while and give errors in V6. For offset try using the clipper plugin. Rhino offset has some issues sometimes, as discussed here: We need to talk about Offset
For this I use a Grasshopper definition which I found on the old Grasshopper forum and have been tweaking for my personal use. Blogpost made by FrankS Re-orient solids for 2D-CNC layouts - Grasshopper
There is a nesting component in Generation from @antonioturiello but that is unfortunately quite slow for a lot of parts so yeah I end up switching to Vcarve for that. GENERATION | Food4Rhino
Thanks for the compliment. 5000$ for RhinoCam pro seems to me to be way too overpriced for the things I can already do. We’re (slowly) working on a grasshopper plugin that generates Gcode (or Shopbot code) from 2D as well as 3D Rhino geometry and that works just awesome + we can implement whatever function we would like to see. I guess that’s the same feeling that you experience with your laser cutter.
For more complicated 3D tooling I switch to Fusion 360.
This is interesting… I run a Flow Mach3 waterjet but just use the Flow software for nesting and programming the machine. It’s pretty flaky software and crashes often if you don’t give it good, valid dxf files consisting of only lines and arcs but it’s pretty impressive how easy it is to use when it works. Just select all the geometry and press autopath will workout inside and outside profiles even when nested within each other. It works out the offset for the jet automatically.
The nesting software is pretty primitive though. It’s definitely a time saver if you have loads of parts to nest but it’s often easy to manually create a more efficient nest.
For creating G-Code for my CNC router at home I use CAMBAM which costs about £90 for a license. I really like it as it’s simple and intuitive to use. Not sure if it can create g-Code for a laser but I don’t see why it couldn’t. There are loads of plugins availablesimilar to GH.