In case, when your real parts are longer than stocks and your manufacture technology enables you to join small fragments together (welding, gluing, etc.), you can split these long parts before optimization. To split parts, go to Plan parts tab, select desired parts (to select all, press Ctrl+A) and choose the menu item "Edit > Split part". Following Split part dialog appears.
Split part to fragments with length |
All selected parts will be split into fragments with this value. |
If last fragment is smaller |
Determines, what to do with the last part smaller than desired value (Nothing, Round it up, New length). |
Delete part fragments created before |
All part fragments that were created before will be deleted. |
Example
Material |
Stocks (Length x Qty) |
Parts (Length x Qty) |
Square steel |
4,000 x Unlimited (usual size from supplier) |
12,400 x 10 |
|
1,200 x 12 (remnants) |
11,300 x 8 |
|
|
6,200 x 12 |
As you can see when you run optimization, it is not possible to optimize such plan because of too large parts.
Solution is to split these parts. Select all parts (Ctrl+A) and choose the menu item "Edit > Split part". Enter desired length (in our case 4,000) and press "Split" button. Parts are split into following fragments.
As you can see, all part fragments have the same Part # as their original part and are recognized via this number. Now it is possible to run optimization. Following diagram demonstrates optimized plan.
After optimization of cutting plan which includes split parts, UI and "Cutting layouts" report show how to cut material to get part fragments. After the part fragments are cut, you need to put them together and join them to get final parts.