Solidworks & Sigmanest

Discussion in 'SolidWorks' started by Richard Charney, May 21, 2004.

  1. Does anybody else use Sigmanest for creating their laser files to cut
    sheetmetal parts?

    We use it, but we just got a 30 trial for the Solidworks interface. We would
    like to use the interface so we don't have to export the flat patterns out
    as dxf or dwg files, but I noticed a couple of things that I don't like
    about it. For starters, when you import a flat pattern, it always imports it
    upside down with no way of flipping the flat pattern within Sigmanest. I
    know, it shouldn't matter, but we always consider the side that faces up to
    be the good side. We do this because the good side is a visual side of our
    parts and needs to be as clean and scratch free as possible. The other
    problem is that we use configurations of parts, and as far as I can tell,
    Sigmanest doesn't recognize any configurations in parts files, only the base
    part. Because of these two key points, the Solidworks interface is pretty
    much useless to us.

    It does have some other really great features. Such as, instead of importing
    each sheetmetal part separately, you can open an assembly and Sigmanest will
    search the entire assembly for any sheetmetal parts and let you setup the
    laser files one after another without having to go and look for each part
    file. It also lets imports custom properties right into all of the fields
    for each part. Like material, material thickness, part number, part
    description, etc. This is really nice, not having to re-type all this info
    and helps speed up the process.

    If anybody else out there uses Sigmanest and the Solidworks interface, I
    would appreciate some help with this if you've got answer to these two
    problems.

    Thanks, Richard
     
    Richard Charney, May 21, 2004
    #1
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