How to use Nester.

Your first nest

1. Select your parts in Illustrator. These are the vector shapes you want to cut. If any of them are live text, outline them first with Type, then Create Outlines.
2. Set your sheet size. Width and Height, in millimetres. This is the material you are cutting from.
3. Click Nest selection. A preview of the packed sheet appears in the panel, with the number of sheets and how long it took.
4. Click Place. The nest drops into the centre of your view, grouped, on its own layer, ready to move or cut.

If the job needs more than one sheet, Nester spills onto as many as it takes and tells you how many. You do not have to ask for that.

Two things that are always true. Parts never overlap. Parts are never mirrored. Both are enforced by the engine and covered by automated tests on every release.

The four modes

The tabs across the top of the panel choose how Nester packs. Every mode uses the same settings below it, so switching tab does not lose your sheet size or your gap.

Pick the mode that matches the job, not the one that sounds cleverest. Grid on a sheet of rectangles will beat true-shape nesting on speed and tidiness every time.

Nest

The default, and the one to use unless you have a reason not to.

True-shape packing. Nester follows the real outline of each part, turning and interlocking them so the gaps between letters and shapes get used rather than the empty box around them. The space inside an O, between the arms of a K, under the overhang of a T: a bounding box throws it away, and Nester packs into it.

Use it for anything irregular: letters, logos, brackets, curved parts, mixed jobs.

Grid

For identical rectangles. Labels, stickers, panels, plaques, anything where the answer is simply as many of these as fit, in tidy rows and columns.

Grid is far faster than true-shape nesting because it is not solving anything, it is laying out. Two things to know:

• Grid always keeps parts upright. Rotation is 0 degrees by design, and the panel says so rather than offering you a control that would do nothing.
• Columns lets you force a number of parts per row. Leave it at 0 and Nester fills the sheet width for you.
• Stagger offsets every other row by half a step, giving you a brick or checkerboard layout. Nester suppresses the offset automatically if it would push a part off the sheet.

If your parts are not rectangles, Grid warns you up front. It will still run, but true-shape Nest is the better answer.

Strip

For roll material. Vinyl, banner, laminate, anything that comes off a roll rather than a sheet.

Strip packs one continuous strip of a fixed width that grows in length as it needs to. You set the roll width and Nester works out the length.

The one thing people get the wrong way round: the strip runs left to right, so the roll width is the fixed vertical side. The panel reminds you when you are in Strip mode.

Strip respects grain, so it pairs naturally with the Grained tick below.

Nest Inside

For filling the holes in parts, so the material you have already paid for does real work.

Most parts have waste in the middle: the hole in a frame, the gap inside a ring, the counter of an O or an A. Nest Inside packs your small parts into that space. You stay in control, because you tell Nester which shapes are the containers.

It is a three step job, and the panel lays it out in that order.

1. Choose containers. Select the shape or shapes with the space you want to fill, and click Set as containers. They are remembered, so you do not reselect them. Show highlights what is set. Clear unsets everything.
2. Fill containers. Select just the parts you want to pack inside, and click Fill containers. Nester fills each container as full as it will go, turning parts and keeping your gap, never overlapping. Each filled container becomes a group: the shape plus the parts now sitting inside it, held together.
3. Nest the whole job. Click Nest whole job. The filled groups travel as solid pieces, packed in tight alongside anything left over, and Place drops the lot.

Set more than one container and Nester cascades. It fills the smallest first, then drops that filled group into the next biggest, and so on. A tray inside a frame inside a sheet.

Be aware: Nest Inside is the slowest thing Nester does. A large job can take two to three minutes. It is working, not stuck, and the panel shows you which phase it is in.

If a container shape has no usable hole, Nester says so and leaves it alone rather than dropping it quietly.

Sheet size

Width and Height, in millimetres. This is your material, not your artboard, and it is the single setting most worth getting right, because everything else is packed inside it.

• In Nest and Grid, both figures are used as given: Width and Height.
• In Strip, the two boxes change. Roll width (fixed) is the one you fill in, and it is the vertical side, because the strip runs left to right. Length is a result, not a setting: it is read only and grows to fit the job. The panel relabels both boxes and puts roll width first, so you do not have to remember which is which.

Draw sheet outline is ticked unless you untick it. Ticked, Place draws the material rectangle round the nest. Unticked, the parts land in exactly the same layout with no rectangle, so there is nothing to delete.

Nester does not read your document size or your artboard. Sheet size is always what you type here, which means a 2440 by 1220 sheet stays 2440 by 1220 whatever your artboard happens to be.

Save the sizes you use every week as presets and you will not type them again.

Scale

The percentage your drawing is at, so parts nest at the size they will actually cut.

If you draw at full size, leave it alone. If you draw at a tenth scale, set 10, and Nester will treat a 100mm line as a 1000mm part when it packs the sheet.

Get this wrong and everything else is wrong with it: the nest will be perfect and the parts will be the wrong size. It is worth a second look before a big run.

Quantity

Qty × multiplies your whole selection. Select one of each part, set 10, and you get ten of everything in one nest.

This is the everyday control and it is the one to reach for. Nesting ten copies in a single run packs tighter than nesting one and copying it nine times, because Nester can interlock the copies with each other.

Per-part quantities

For the job where you need four of one part and eleven of another.

Open Per-part quantities, click Scan selection, and Nester lists what you have selected. Set a number against each part.

This is the exception, not the rule. If you want the same number of everything, the Qty × box at the top is quicker and less to go wrong.

Grained material

Tick Grained when the material has a direction: wood, brushed metal, some laminates, and any roll where the print or the weave runs one way.

Parts then only turn by 0 or 180 degrees, so they flip end over end but never lie sideways across the grain. It costs you a little density and it saves you a scrapped sheet.

Leave it off for plain acrylic, plain aluminium, plain vinyl and anything else with no direction.

Nest and Place

Two separate buttons, deliberately.

Nest selection works out the layout and shows you a preview in the panel. Nothing is added to your document yet. Look at the preview, change a setting, nest again. Nesting costs you nothing.

Each nest is worked out fresh. Nest the same job again with the same settings and you get a different layout, not a copy of the last one. If you have already approved a layout or sent it to a machine, keep the placed nest rather than nesting again.

The status line under the buttons tells you what happened: how many parts were placed, how many sheets it needed, how long each phase took, and how many parts did not fit.

Place drops the nest onto the artboard. It lands in the centre of your current view, grouped (with its sheet outline, if that is ticked), on its own layer, and stays selected so you can move it straight away.

Your parts are moved into the nest, not copied. The shapes in the nest are the ones you selected, repositioned and turned. Delete the nest and you delete that artwork with it. Undo puts everything back where it was. If you want to keep the layout you started with, copy your selection first and nest the copy. Where you asked for more than one of a part, the first one is your original and the extras are new copies.

Parts that did not fit are not lost. They are parked in a tidy block above the sheet, tallest first, using the same gap as the nest. The panel tells you how many. Nothing is ever silently dropped.

Options

Tucked into the Options section, because most jobs never need them.

Gap. The space left between parts, in millimetres. Set it to the width of your cut plus whatever margin you want between finished pieces. Too tight and parts weld together on a laser or tear on a router. Too loose and you throw material away.

Edge. The margin kept clear all round the sheet, in millimetres. Useful for clamps, grippers, the edge of a roll, or a sheet you know is not square.

Rotation. How freely parts may turn.

More freedom packs tighter and takes longer. The default of 90 degree steps is right for most work.

In Grid mode, rotation is always 0. The control does nothing there, so the panel shows you a plain note instead of pretending otherwise.

Effort. How long Nester spends on each sheet: Quick, Balanced or Thorough. Balanced is the default and is right for most work. Thorough gives it twice as long per sheet, so a big job takes longer to come back.

Columns and Stagger appear for Grid mode and are covered under Grid above.

Presets

A preset is a saved bundle of nesting settings, kept on this machine.

Set the panel up the way you want it, click +, name it, and tick which settings the preset should control. Anything you leave unticked is not touched when you apply it, so you can have a preset that only ever sets the sheet size and leaves your gap alone.

The cog manages them: rename, reorder, delete, or set a default. The default loads every time you open Nester.

Presets remember the mode as well, so a preset made in Strip comes back in Strip.

Cutting rates are not in here. They live under Estimates as materials, because they change for different reasons and it keeps both lists short.

Estimates

The part that pays for the plugin.

Once you have nested, Estimates tells you what the job costs before you cut anything. Click Add estimate to artboard and it drops a block next to the nest, on its own layer.

Set up a material first. In the Estimates area, open the Material dropdown, add a material, and fill in what you know:

• Feed rate, in mm per second or mm per minute, for the machine that will cut it
• Cost per minute, what the machine costs you to run
• Sell per minute, what you charge
• VAT, or whatever you call your tax, with its rate

Every row has a tick. Untick one and it does not appear on the block, with no gap left behind. Fill in only what you want to see.

What the block reports.

Utilisation is the number to watch. It is the honest answer to whether the nest was any good, and it is the figure to compare against how the same job used to be laid out by hand.

What it is not. It is a quick estimate off contour length and a feed rate, not a machine simulation. It does not know about acceleration, corners, lead ins, tool changes or the time somebody spends loading the sheet. Use it to quote quickly and sanity check, not to promise a minute.

Appearance

Light, Dark or Auto. Auto follows Illustrator, so the panel matches whatever theme you work in. Dark is the default. Your choice is remembered.

When something does not look right

Nothing nested, or the button did nothing. Check something is actually selected in Illustrator, and that it is vector. Live text has to be outlined first. Placed images cannot be nested.

The parts came out the wrong size. Scale. See the Scale section above.

Fewer parts fitted than you expected. Look at the gap and the edge first, they are the usual culprits. Then rotation: 0 degrees only will always fit less than 90 degree steps.

Some parts did not fit. They are parked in a block above the sheet, and the status line says how many. Either give it another sheet, or reduce the quantity, or loosen the gap.

Nest Inside is taking minutes. That is expected on a large job. The status line shows the phase it is in. If you want it faster, mark fewer containers or send fewer parts into the fill.

Windows warned you about the file when you installed it. The nesting engine is a small program that ships with the plugin, and Windows is cautious about programs it has not seen many times before.

Something nested oddly. Tell us, with a screenshot and roughly what the job was. It is the quickest route to it being fixed.