Sheet Database
The Sheets page in the Factory Settings can be used to add or edit sheet inventory. The sheets are displayed as tiles drawn to scale (the scale factor can be adjusted using the slider) and can be sorted by type, width, height, area, quantity, and grain. The sheet background colour indicates the material, and the pinstripe overlay on top indicates the grain direction. Selecting a sheet displays the editor on the right, allowing a variety of properties of the sheet to be edited. The hierarchy tree on the left can be used to filter the view and display sheets of a specific material and thickness. It also provides a quick overview of the total list of materials and thicknesses available.
Remnant sheets in the sheets inventory list are displayed with a green border. The filter option also allows you to switch between all sheets and remnant sheets.
Sheet Margins and Clamps
CAM settings like nest margins and clamp positions can be assigned for the Sheet+Machine combination. These settings can be assigned by selecting a sheet from the database. CAM settings follow Raw-Material > Sheet > Sheet + Machine hierarchy where, unless overridden, values assigned at the upper level is derived by the lower.
Sheet Priority
Select a sheet from the sheet database to set the priority. Priority values have a similar semantic as Flux/MetaCAM with ‘Zero’ being the no priority assigned.
Sheet Storage Value
The storage value for the sheet can be assigned to the sheet’s Shelf property on the factory • sheets page. The assigned shelf value is emitted to the package file.
Standard Sheet Management
As some of the job shops do sheet inventory management outside Praxis, the sheet inventory is disabled by default in Praxis. It can be enabled by selecting the Update sheet inventory on the nest (un)release option on the factory • settings • jobs settings page. When selected:
- The sheet count is decremented when a layout (nest) is released for production using the Send to Machine… layout command.
- The sheet count is incremented back when the nest is unreleased using the Recall from Machine… layout command or the job is deleted.
- The interactive nesting displays the used quantity. These are the unreleased layouts waiting in the approval queue for which the sheet quantity has not yet been committed to the inventory. These uncommitted counts should help the user know the exact available sheet quantity.
- The uncommitted sheet quantity is adjusted against the inventory sheet quantity during the auto-nesting.
Remnant Sheet Management
Praxis gives the remnant sheet a higher priority when nesting is performed. The standard sheet workflow is also followed for the remnant sheets as well except the inventory management is always enabled for the remnants (irrespective of whether the option is selected in the settings). This is done because – unlike the standard sheets, which are manually created by a user, the remnants are created automatically by Praxis and are therefore transient with a shorter lifespan.
Unless the inventory is updated automatically when the sheets are consumed, the sheet database will get flooded with the remnant sheets.
If a layout is nested on a remnant sheet, the available remnant quantity is updated on the layout release.
Unlike the standard sheets where sheets with zero-inventory count are also displayed in the sheet database. The remnant sheets with the zero-inventory quantity are considered consumed and therefore not displayed in the sheet database.
