2D Cutting Diagrams
Organizing and Planning Material Usage
The 2D cutting diagrams view lets you organize and plan how you cut and use your materials. The pieces of your design appear here, rotated around so they are flat. If your design consists of Smart Objects, this job may already be done, as several of the Smart Objects already contain optimized cutting diagrams. Here are a few steps we followed when optimizing our Smart Object cutting diagrams. They're simple and rather painless.
Cutting Diagram for the Two Door Cabinet
Switch to the Cutting Diagram (mode)
Design Intuition has two modes: normal and Cutting Diagram. To work on the Cutting Diagram, we need to switch into that mode. In the View controls, click on the checkbox labeled Cutting Diagram (pictured at right). The kerf slider (see below) will then immediately appear (if you are in the 2D view).
Set the kerf
The kerf or snap gap controls how much of a gap object snapping leaves between your pieces. For this to happen, object snap must be enabled. I recommend the maximum kerf, to account for making several passes to remove dings and burn marks. I get burn marks for my first cut or two at least half the time.
Group your pieces by thickness
The idea here is to group all your like-sized pieces together in one group and then arrange them to minimize the resulting waste.
Here's a cute little trick. Switch to Cutting Diagrams mode (IMPORTANT: make sure you do this). Switch to the Materials view. You'll notice that everything is sorted by the size of the smallest dimension. This is the dimension by which you want to group your pieces. To do so, select all the rows with the same smallest dimension. NOTE: If a row has a triangle at its leftmost edge, make sure you reveal all the items associated with that row by clicking on the triangle. All the triangles should point down. Once you have selected all the pieces with the same smallest dimension, switch to the Cutting Diagram view. Choose the Group menu item from the Objects Menu. Name this group something suggestive, like "quarter inch plywood," or "one inch vertical grain fir."
Repeat this process for the rest of your lumber. Note that, as you create groups, your materials list shrinks.
Arrange your pieces
Within each group that you created above, move your pieces around until they fit. You can rotate them using the convenient button near the top of the view.
If your group needs to be moved around, you'll need to enable selecting for it first. To do this, select an item in that group and click on the button labeled Stop Arranging Objects in Containing Group (see illustration below). The group will be selected. Move your group to the desired location and then click on the button labeled Arrange Objects in Group so that you can continue arranging the objects within it.
Once your organizing is complete, click the Stop Arranging button again.
When I resize my design, the cutting diagram looks terrible! Why?
This is a "quick and dirty" version which does the tedious job of flattening your pieces but leaves the task of organizing those pieces to you. Once you've organized your cutting diagram, any subsequent size changes will cause your pieces in the cutting diagram to no longer be organized. Gaps and overlaps will appear. Rearranging your pieces usually takes only a few moments, though.
If you want to "teach" your cutting diagram how to self-organize, you can alter the expressions for various pieces. Admittedly, this is not an easy task (and in some cases, Design Intuition will erase your alterations). At some point, perhaps as early as next year, Design Intuition will have some mechanisms for this kind of "teaching" that are much simpler too use.
Are there any other limitations?
Cutting Diagrams don't work well with Repeaters. Everytime you alter a repeater so that a new repeated object is created, the equivalent object in the Cutting Diagram is placed on top of the first such object. Worse, the locations in the Cutting Diagram of your repeated objects isn't saved.
However, for very simple repeaters, such as stairs and tilings, in which the object being repeated isn't a group, the Cutting Diagram will show just one object, computed to the right size using the Count from the repeater.
For complex repeaters, you'll have to use a calculator. At some point, I'll delve back into this problem and provide a better solution.
How do I keep track of the grain direction?
I'm still thinking about this one.
