Auto Layout updated to V3.1: oriented parts!

lemon1324

Added an option per some forum requests to allow specified orientation of parts.  Parts will still need to be of equal thickness, but for all parts of a given thickness selecting a face as a "face to orient" will ensure that face is nested facing downwards, allowing for 2.5- or 3-axis machining on a router. All parts without a selected face to orient will be nested with the largest face down. This is a slight modification from the previous operation of this feature to facilitate use without too many manual selections when making routed parts.  If the largest-face-upwards functionality is critical you may wish to keep this feature at its previous version.

Also fixed a small bug in the bin-packing algorithm, which in certain unfortunate combinations of parts could lead to part spacing constraints being violated.

Find it here: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/576e01dbe4b0cc2e7f46a55d/v/731e73ac0b7b1e4334f13106/e/b72c231628b5affea0873222

Alex_Pitt

@lemon1324 this is great! Thanks for posting!. All of this is far beyond my FS capabilities, but how tricky would it be to add a control for grain direction? The ability to rotate selected parts 90 degrees (or perhaps an arbitrary angle) would be amazing.

lemon1324

Should be pretty straightforward, actually.

I'm currently working on a different joint script, but I'll add this to the list of improvements to make eventually.

Alex_Pitt

Thank you Mr Suresh! Adding grain direction control on a "per-part" basis would be a fantastic addition! Thanks again for sharing this very useful FS.

MichaelPascoe

Legit!

YWC

Such a great update. Assigning oriented faces saves lives  
Grain direction feature could be excellent. Maybe direction of grain could be determined by selecting edges of parts

david_lang457

can you add an option to not put a kerf around the outside of the part?
example, a part that's 3/4"x3/4" will not fit in a piece of stock that's 3/4x3/4x120

lemon1324

Currently pretty busy with personal stuff, but I'll take a look when I can. I'm pretty sure the current bin-packing algorithm doesn't flag which bins are/aren't on the edge of the stock though so I'm pretty sure this won't be a simple fix. The easiest way to fix this might just be to internally make the "stock" bigger by 2x the kerf and then offset the final result so it's still aligned to the coordinate axes.  If that approach works that's probably the easiest workaround, just do that manually.

david_lang457

That's what I did for the workaround, but I figured I'd mention the issue.
I also wasn't able to figure out how to put a face down. I have a L shaped piece with the outside corner of the L rounded, and it assembles them into sticks in random orientations (based on where they started). When I hit the checkbox to pick a face for the orientation, it opened up a selection box, but then I was unable to select anything.

Not at all critical for me (purely cosmetic in this case), but letting you know of an issue I ran in to.

lemon1324

Can you share a minimal example document mith me that illustrates the selection problem?  I have a test case for making sure that functionality works and it seems to work fine on my test case.

david_lang457

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/9d12db31b4a3ab160749d9db/w/803db6308d778ef4cdab0766/e/e3f02f39b0b6613aec03cd47
not quite the most minimal, but pretty small

lemon1324

Seems to work fine for me - are you sure you're selecting faces on the pre-laid out parts? Onshape by default shows the result of the feature in 50% transparency, but those entities can't be selected.

david_lang457

Thanks,

That was what I was missing, I was trying to click on the faces of the parts as they were arranged. for something like the corner molding of this example, it's hard to know which direction it's going to end up being rotated (yes, that face will be down, but since it's not symmetrical when you flip it around 180 on the rod...)

so I was able to get one side down, now I'll go back and see if I can figure out which part is which to select a different face (and if it remains consistent or not over time and new parts)

matt_anderson178

I am curious if there is a way to make this a little more compact? as you can see with the Auto layout that if I wanted to water jet these out of a 3'x8' sheet that two sheets are layed out, but obviously if I could shift some down you could fit it in one.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/f4173732c559f48d07645bdb/w/b7273cd4b0e02c93624d1f3f/e/aa9a35b9c41f56c8c476cba8

guillermo_lovato

¿how do you export the resulting layout?, i can't find any way since they're not a 2D sketch so i can't export to flat DXF.

And since they're all individual parts i can't export all the top faces together in a single DXF either.

I need a 2D planar DXF of the resulting nest for manufacturing, not solid parts(i also can't find how to export all the parts together in a single file if i wanted that)

MichaelPascoe

@guillermo_lovato create a drawing then insert the studio into a drawing with only the top view. Then you can export the drawing as DXF. While in the drawing, you can right click the view > Show/Hide edges. This will let you hide any edges you don't want to export.

guillermo_lovato

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/106803#Comment_106803

interesting, i thought the export would constrain it to the page size of the drawing but appears to have exported everything at 1:1 as instructed. Tried it and it apparently worked

lemon1324

If you have multiple sheets, I usually insert a top view of the part studio and then do crop views to pick which cut layout gets exported on which drawing sheet.