Custom plates and auto nesting
At a glance
- Use a normal file, Drafting, or Design part as the plate boundary
- Keep concavities, arcs, holes, and separate material islands
- Nest, Fill Sheet, drag, quote, and post against the same actual material
Oxyfuel uses the same automatic nesting system as Plasma, with spacing driven by the active oxyfuel cut chart. Quick, Medium, Max, custom efforts, locked obstacles, nest-on-import, Fill Sheet, and Rip Up Nest work the same way. See Nesting Controls, Skyline packing, and NFP nesting for the shared controls and algorithms.
Use a part as the plate
Import the plate or remnant as a normal part from a file, Drafting, or Design. Right-click that part on the canvas or in the Parts browser and choose Set Plate Shape. A loose part becomes the active sheet; a placed part becomes its owning sheet. Closed outside contours are usable material, holes are unavailable voids, and separate outside contours remain separate islands. Curves and concavities keep their actual shape, while a mesh marks missing material in the canvas.
The sheet row gains a Custom Plate badge. Sheet details show the source, actual dimensions, and the retained rectangular Width and Height. Those dimensions are read-only until Release Plate Shape restores the rectangle and returns the source as a loose part. Replace Plate Shape swaps in another eligible part and restores the old source.
Nesting, Fill Sheet, manual movement, leads, toolpaths, DXF sheet export, usage, and material quotes all follow the actual plate and its voids. Add Sheet creates a rectangle and Duplicate Sheet copies the custom plate. After custom stock fills, Auto-Nest tries other existing sheets and then creates rectangular overflow sheets using the retained Width, Height, and oxyfuel cut settings.