[Forrest C]

I have never used V25 BobCad-Cam as I have been drawing and machining from Solidworks. That will be a mute point since they do not have nesting in V3 BobCam for SWs. I would like to use my V25 3xPro to design, nest and machine mdf doors so here are my questions related to that.

Can I design parametric doors? Since I use dedicated shaped tools for each pass I would assume the part will consist of an outline with individual toolpaths inside for each tool to cut on.

If this is the way it is setup can I have each line named as a layer that a set of features can be loaded to automatically apply the correct tools and settings to?

Is there any way to select a specific part (door) from a catalog and create a list of sizes that will dump into nested sheets? Individually loading and resizing isn't practical.

Not being familiar with V25 I would like to know the possible steps necessary to do what I want to do. If this works I'm going to sell my Cabinet Design software.

Forrest

[Trotline]

It's going to be neither as easy nor as flexible as you'd like, I'm afraid. Parametric left the building with Solidworks. While you can save features and apply them to new geometry very easily, it is a manual process, not automatic. You'd select your size, (drawing) from a database, Apply the saved Feature, (Door_1, Door_2, etc.), and then select the geometry for each part of the Feature. (It's faster than it sounds, especially with practice.) You can have shortcuts, such as color-coded drawings to make the various geometries of the Features very quick and easy to select, for instance.

The Nesting in BobCAD is something I need to explore. I got it in the latest package, but have yet to really use it. My initial impression is that it's got a pretty narrowly defined workflow, so getting in step with that flow will be critical.

Luke

[Forrest C]

After my post I realized that I have nesting and cam software built in to the machine control. I've only used the dxf capabilities once before and forgot it was an option. All the layers need names which reflect the tool and settings used to machine each tool path. The dxf files can be sorted in an excel sheet and loaded all at once into the nesting program which then nest and writes code.

I'm going to explore this option and see if I can work out how to load and size the doors quickly into BC or SWs.

Forrest