Group Nesting

Keep things in order while nesting them!

Group Nesting is a grasshopper component which works as an extension of Open Nest tool and enables users to define adjacency between the items in a nest, meaning user of plugin is able to keep things which are related to each other or belong to a group close to each other in the nesting. This helps to keeps elements more organized and reduce the time which is normally wasted in sorting and finding elements later on in the production pipe line.

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Idea

The idea came from the digital production company Bächer Bergmann GmbH and it was developed to expedite the assembly process of complex objects with laser cut parts.

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Efficiency

The algorithm uses the Open nest bin packing algorithm in background , therefore in terms of the efficiency it relies on the efficiency of the algorithms in the base plug-in.

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Requirements

The plug-in is designed based on Rhino 6 and 7 on windows platform. You also need Open nest plugin installed.

How it works

The component works just like the Open nest component taking an extra input called “Labels”. Each item must receive a label therefore the number of items and labels must coincide. Simply by setting a unique label for multiple items, they are grouped together in the nesting.

Group Nest

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Group Nesting in a glance

Labels

A set of labels as (text) which corresponds to the items. Items with similar labels will be grouped in the nesting.

Items

A flatten list of items to nest.

Sheet width

The width of the rectangle sheet used for nesting.

Sheet length

The height of the rectangle sheet used for nesting.

Spacing

The minimum distance of the nested items.

Tolerance

Tolerance used in Open nest algorithm.

Group size

The maximum size of the group with respect to the sheet size. The value must be in range of 0 to 1. lower values force the algorithm to create smaller groups. Setting the Group size to 1 will use the entire sheet area for creating the group.