[yham]

Hi guys,

I am crashing my head how to do this:

I made a cabinet, 5 panels, all butt joined. All panels are solids. Then, how to make all 5 panels "exploded" and oriented side by side on the same CPlane so they can be arranged for cutting from a sheet of ply? Manually doing this is not fun.

Thanks

[BurrMan]

Sounds like you are asking about "nesting..."... If you have money, you can buy a program that can automate this.. Rhino Nest is about $500.00...

I can give a tip that somewhat helps with regular commands...

I haven't automated the "explode and reorient" part totally, so there is still some manual work to do, but this will allow to to just reposition the parts "sloppy but fast" then run a could commands to get what you want....

First, get the script "Distribute Objects" from Pascal here:

Pascal Golay's scripted utilities for Rhino. [McNeel Wiki]

Get that loaded in... Now you can grab your solid 5 objects and just do a quick "orientation in space" using the gumball or whatever command you like to rotate with, but no need to be placement aware... Just get them all pointing in the same direction...

Now you can run Panels-Box Edit and zero out the Z and the Y...

Then run Distribute and set the X for an even setup.......

Not fully automated but a little less than manual...

Heres a video started with "the rotated objects" and running the 2 commands...

https://youtu.be/Lr936WMDKAg

[yham]

Hi BurrMan,

You made my day today. Thanks for the instructions.

BTW you gave me some ideas how to do it. It is all manual work, but I don't see the other way. First do duplicate face border of all panels, then orient rectangles to the same height and then nest them. After nesting, copy all solid panels to the places where their corresponding borders are, and then cutting all holes and dadoes and grooves.

[BurrMan]

Right on Yham.. Glad it sparked something.....