Turn grain off select parts

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Forrest Chapman
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Turn grain off select parts

Post by Forrest Chapman »

The option to turn the grain off on say toekicks and stretchers would be immensely helpful. I know this has come up a few times over the years and I'm sure the need is still there. I have another design software with this feature that I can save a couple sheets on a given job sometimes by doing this. With material cost getting upwards of $100 a sheet this is a big deal over time.

Forrest
Forrest Chapman
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Re: Turn grain off select parts

Post by Forrest Chapman »

Bump :D
Forrest Chapman
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Re: Turn grain off select parts

Post by Forrest Chapman »

I envision a drop down menu of part types similar to the change material option in ecabinets but something else that would be nice is the option to select a part on a sheet and turn grain off so you can rotate just that part.
Mark McCallum
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Re: Turn grain off select parts

Post by Mark McCallum »

Hi Forrest
It could be a useful feature.
I was cutting triangles the other day, 3 different thicknesses, so I picked 3 different random materials. I wasn't thinking and one had grain and was bad nesting, In that situation it would have been much quicker to just turn of the grain but to get good optimization it required redoing the TWD, Well,.... that's how I fixed it.
I like the Idea of being able to select a piece and turn of the grain, things like MW box backs or drawer bases. sometimes it can save you a sheet or more of colour board.

I suppose the problem is that you don't want the guy at the machine arbitrarily turning off the grain and spoiling the whole job.
Perhaps a password system could work.

Mark
Will Williamson
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Re: Turn grain off select parts

Post by Will Williamson »

Cabinet grade hardwood, plywood, is 140 to 180 per sheet in Detroit Michigan.
1 inch 4 x 8 baltic birch, went from 65 to 145
And, they, can barely, keep up, with the demand.
Ordering a couple of months in advance is necessary
Will

http://www.willmade.com

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Clint Buechlein
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Re: Turn grain off select parts

Post by Clint Buechlein »

It's been on my wishlist for a while as well. Projects, projects, projects.

-Clint-
Mark McCallum
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Re: Turn grain off select parts

Post by Mark McCallum »

This is a wood grain job where the function to turn off grain to selected parts would have helped a lot.
This was the initial nest and by the time I fiddled it, I had 1 curved piece on sheet 8 that I would have been able to wrangle in if I could have adjusted the angles of a couple of the curves

If I was to start the job now after having done it, in hindsight, I would have found the best configuration layout manually before doing the DXFs. (This material was over $300 a sheet, so worth trying to save a sheet.)

As a side note, on standard board when a piece is selected, if you try and type an angle into the numerical angle box instead of using the slider, It goes straight to writing the CNC. I'm not sure if its meant to do that but it does it to me.
If you haven't finished all your adjustments you have to restart adjusting the layout from scratch.

It would be nice to be able to type in an angle because the the slider can be a bit laggy on the curved pieces.
And is there a nudge factor available for the numerical keypad arrows?



Wood-grain1.jpg
Forrest Chapman
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Re: Turn grain off select parts

Post by Forrest Chapman »

Hey Mark, bumping this thread but also wanted to let you know that when you select the rotate function you can use your arrow keys to jog up or down.

Forrest
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