Best-in-Class Results From Alphacam’s New Nesting Engine

Tests on the new nesting engine unveiled in Alphacam 2018 R2 show a 17 per cent improvement in material yield.

Using proprietary technology to deliver what Brand Manager Hector Henry says are “best-in-class geometry,” toolpath optimisation and part handling, the nesting engine also provides faster calculation times, along with improved feedback and graphics.

And he says the overall theme of the latest release is to save time and improve productivity.

Parametric Rules have now been migrated to C# and have an enhanced GUI and functionality, allowing for greater control, improved UX and simpler, more streamlined, logic statements, which he says has improved productivity and reliability.

The Face Milling Cycle has been enhanced, and is now part of Alphacam’s Core Functionality, creating intelligent toolpaths, allowing user to face (surface) mill irregular and multiple geometries. “This improves productivity, as the user doesn’t need to create several operations to achieve the same result.”

Productivity has also been improved through the new Order by Intersecting Geometry function which saves significant time when ordering the sequence of a complex job. It works by letting the user select a previously created geometry to define the order of geometries or toolpaths, based on those which intersect the selected geometry first.

The Parametric Sketcher is now considerably more powerful, thanks to an updated UI, meaning the window can be resized. “This provides greater visibility over the Parameters and Actions list, which will be essential for managing complex projects.” There are also improvements to the Sketcher’s geometry creation tools, for creating fillets and chamfers as part of the Geometry creation tool set. This improves productivity as it does away with the need to calculate those points.    

Enhancements to Alphacam’s dimensioning system provide greater clarity when printing and presenting information. User-defined suffixes for both the primary and alternate units – as well as a scale factor – mean that two separate values can now be displayed.

Importing CAD models has been updated through the support of SolidWorks configurations. “Alphacam now has a new interface for users to select which configuration of an assembly to import, without the need to ascertain that the last version saved in SolidWorks matches the one they want,” says Hector Henry.

Headquartered in England, Vero Software designs, develops, and supplies CAD/CAM/CAE software radically enhancing the efficiency of design and manufacturing processes, providing its customers with exceptional value through high productivity gains and significantly reducing time to market. The company’s world-renowned brands include Alphacam, Cabinet Vision, Edgecam, Machining STRATEGIST, PEPS, Radan, SMIRT, SURFCAM, WorkNC and VISI, along with the production control MRP system Javelin. Despite the diversity of application, these solutions have one thing in common: they all address the rising challenges of achieving manufacturing efficiencies and bring huge value to the operations in which they are deployed.

Vero has direct offices in the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Japan, USA, Brazil, Netherlands, China, South Korea, Spain and India supplying products to more than 45 countries through its wholly owned subsidiaries and reseller network.

Vero is part of Hexagon, a leading global provider of information technologies that drive productivity and quality across geospatial and industrial enterprise applications. Hexagon’s solutions integrate sensors, software, domain knowledge and customer workflows into intelligent information ecosystems that deliver actionable information. They are used in a broad range of vital industries.

Hexagon (Nasdaq Stockholm: HEXA B) has approximately 18,000 employees in 50 countries and net sales of approximately 3.1bn EUR. Learn more at hexagon.com and follow us @HexagonAB.