SheetNest 1.1.5

SheetNest 1.1.5

The headline of this release is 3D import: bring in a STEP or IGES sheet-metal part and SheetNest unfolds it to a flat pattern ready for nesting — no separate CAD program required. A built-in 3D unfolding engine ships inside the installer and runs fully offline, with nothing extra to install. Free, open-source nesting software for sheet metal fabrication, laser and plasma cutting.

3D import (STEP / IGES)

• File → Import 3D unfolds every sheet-metal solid in a STEP or IGES file to a flat DXF and adds it as a part. Assemblies give you one part per solid.
• Built-in, offline unfolding engine — packaged right in the installer; there's nothing extra to download or install.
• Per-part K-factor (ANSI/DIN standard) editable in Edit Part, with instant re-unfolding.
• Flattened parts come out as clean closed outlines, so the DXF your laser receives is ready to cut.

Nesting & export

• Common-line cutting — parts that touch share a single cut, so there's less to cut; even shared diagonals (like triangle edges) merge into one line on export.
• Auto-pairing — parts that fit together are paired up automatically to pack tighter (about 28% less strip length on triangles).
• Cancel nest + progress bar — long jobs can be cancelled in about a second, with live phase and progress in the status bar.
• About 80× faster on unfolded 3D parts.
• Mirrored parts — ask for normal plus mirrored copies of any part; the mirror is preserved through DXF export.
• Measure tool in the viewer (verify K-factor and dimensions), with snapping.

Units & sheets

• Metric support — an Inches / Millimeters app setting; sheets up to 6000×2000 mm; mm DXFs import and export natively.
• User sheet presets — save your own sheet sizes to the Add Sheet menu.

Data safety & UX

• Autosave and crash recovery, a .bak on every save, Recent Projects, and a proper .dnest file association (double-click to open).
• Advanced Settings rewritten (rotation choices now stick), and a cleaner main window.
• Help → Send Feedback… and Check for Updates….

Install

Download SheetNest-1.1.5-win-x64.msi and run it. It installs just for you (no admin needed) and is self-contained. This installer is larger than earlier releases because it bundles the offline 3D unfolding engine. Existing installs upgrade in place. On first launch Windows may show a SmartScreen prompt (the app isn't signed) → More info → Run anyway.

SheetNest 1.1.4

SheetNest 1.1.4

Stability release: the reported NEST crash is fixed, and SheetNest now has opt-in problem reporting.

Fixed

• NEST no longer closes the app when a DXF can't be imported. A malformed or unusual DXF made the importer throw and the app silently died (as reported — thank you!). The nest now fails safely: the app stays open and shows a problem-report dialog instead.

New: problem reports (opt-in)

• Any unhandled error writes a crash log to %LOCALAPPDATA%\SheetNest\crash-<date>.log and shows a Problem Report dialog with the full details visible.
• Report on GitHub opens your browser with a pre-filled issue — you review everything there, and nothing is sent unless you submit it yourself. Copy details puts the report on the clipboard; the local log always remains.
• If you hit the crash from 1.1.3: please update and, if it happens again, send the report — the stack trace lets us fix your exact DXF case.

Install

Download SheetNest-1.1.4-win-x64.msi and run it — upgrades any 1.1.x in place, keeping folder, shortcuts and settings. Portable .zip also available.

SheetNest 1.1.3

SheetNest 1.1.3

A classic industrial look, projects that own their stock, and a portrait report. Free sheet metal nesting software with a clean shop-floor Windows look.

Look & feel

• Classic Windows look across the whole app: gray 3D buttons, square corners, Tahoma, classic scrollbars, tabs and menus. Values shown in classic navy; no more greens.
• Parts shown in aluminum gray — in the nest viewer, the part thumbnails and the PDF report — like the real material on the table.
• The nest report PDF is now portrait, restyled to match: a single-column summary page (MATERIAL REQUIRED, JOB SUMMARY, CUTTING PLAN, PART TOTALS) and full-width layout drawings with the parts list underneath.
• Nest navigation labeled the shop way: Nest 1/2 (30) — layout 1 of 2, cut 30 times — with job totals in the status bar and nothing drawn over the plot.

Panels & stock

• Always-visible Available N/N counters: each sheet size shows sheets still available / total (31/31 → 3/31 after a nest), and each part shows copies left to nest / requested. Live before, during and after a nest; Clear Result restores them.
• Clean shop-floor rows: sheets read 120 × 60 with their Available cell and ✎/✕; every quantity and size is edited through its dialog (✎ or double-click) — no inline spinners.
• Stock travels with the job: the app starts with an empty Sheets tab, and each saved .dnest carries its own sheet stock along with its nest result. A nest you never saved never costs you sheets.

Projects

• Save and reopen works as introduced in 1.1.2 (the .dnest stores the on-screen nest); closing, New and Open all offer to save first, via a Save dialog pre-filled with the project's own name.
• The window title shows the clean 3-field version.

Install

Download SheetNest-1.1.3-win-x64.msi and run it — it upgrades 1.1.x in place, keeping folder, shortcuts and settings. A portable .zip is also available.

SheetNest 1.1.2

SheetNest 1.1.2

Denser nests and projects that remember their nesting. More parts per sheet from this free sheet metal nesting software, plus projects that save your layout.

Engine

• Tighter packing — every part now slides as far as it can go (touching parts move to contact, spaced parts to exactly the gap you asked for), gathering the sheet's leftover room into one open area — then the software retries the parts that didn't fit before. When you're nesting set quantities, more parts fit on the same sheet.
• Fewer sheets — once everything is placed, the software tries to fold that last partly-used sheet's parts back onto the earlier sheets. It's all-or-nothing: either that sheet drops off the plan entirely, or nothing moves.
• Smarter layout choice — when two layouts use the same number of sheets, the one that leaves less part area on the last sheet now wins (so 27 parts come out as 24+3 instead of 26+1), and the fine-tuning pass now also runs when a multi-sheet result was already chosen.
• Exact spacing — the measured gap between parts now lands exactly on what you asked for (e.g. 0.2500″), instead of showing up as random extra space.
• Faster than 1.1.1 even while doing more (a mixed 100-part job: 13.4 s → 12.5 s; an 800-part common-line run: 0.75 s → 0.57 s).

Projects

• The .dnest project now saves the on-screen nest result with it. Reopen the project and the nesting is back exactly as saved — viewer, stats, locked panels — and Clear Result still returns the used sheets. Older project files keep opening normally.
• No more lost nests — closing SheetNest, New, and Open all ask whether to save the project first when a nest result is on screen. Yes opens a Save dialog pre-filled with the project's own name and folder (Enter overwrites, typing renames); cancelling the dialog cancels the action.
• Fixed: Save on a never-saved project silently did nothing; cancelling a Save As dialog silently overwrote the previous file.

Install

Download SheetNest-1.1.2-win-x64.msi and run it — it upgrades 1.1.x in place, keeping your install folder, shortcuts, session stock and settings. A portable .zip is also available.

SheetNest 1.1.1

Sheet stock management + installer wizard. Upgrade by running the MSI over any previous version.

Sheet stock is live inventory

• Quantities deduct on nest — run a nest and the Sheets tab immediately shows what remains (35 in stock, nest used 31 → the tab shows 4).
• Clear Result (new red button next to NEST) — discards the nest result and returns the sheets it used to the stock.
• One result at a time — NEST is blocked while a result is active, and the Parts/Sheets panels lock so nothing drifts out of sync; Clear Result unlocks everything.
• Your session survives restarts — sheet stock (the leftover after your last nest) and the sheet edge margin are restored when you reopen the app.
• Clean start — new projects open with no sheets; add the real sizes with Add Sheet.

Installer wizard (MSI)

• Choose the install folder, opt in/out of the desktop shortcut, and launch SheetNest right from the finish page. Your choices are remembered for future upgrades.

UI

• Trimmed toolbar: New · Open · NEST · Clear Result, with Export DXF / Report PDF on the right; parts and sheets are managed in their panels.
• The right-side tab is now Clearances (sheet edge margin); the full engine configuration moved to the Settings → Advanced Settings... menu.

Windows may show a SmartScreen prompt on first run (the app is not code-signed): More info → Run anyway.

SheetNest 1.1.0

SheetNest 1.1.0

The engine, workflow and packaging release. New: install with the MSI — it installs just for you (no admin needed), adds Start-menu and desktop shortcuts, and upgrades cleanly. The portable zip is still available. Free nesting software for sheet metal, now easier to install on Windows.

Nesting engine

• One fast engine, heavily optimized: packs parts tightly, tries the best rotations at the same time, and repeats patterns for production runs. Real 800-part jobs now nest in seconds (they used to take minutes).
• Common-line cutting done right: parts that touch share a single cut, so there's less to cut and less wasted metal — with a hard guarantee that parts never overlap. It works to fit that last part on the current sheet instead of opening a new one (26 parts on one 120×60 sheet, not 25 plus 1 on a second).
• Mixed sheet sizes, best size chosen for you: list every size you stock; the bulk of the job lands on the size that packs densest and the leftover parts on the sheet that wastes least — no matter what order you list them in. Sheet quantities are respected, with an honest count of anything that didn't fit.
• Per-part rotation rules: as drawn / 90° only / 0°+90° / 0°+180° / 90°+270° / 4-way / free — each with its own arrow icon. Parts with a grain direction are never turned in a way that breaks the grain.
• Leftover offcuts are kept as reusable full-width strips, the last sheet is reworked for a tighter fit, and you can set spacing and priority per part.

Workflow

• Nest report PDF: a MATERIAL REQUIRED box for purchasing (sheets per size + square feet), the cutting plan, part totals, and a page per distinct layout with a scaled drawing.
• DXF export writes parts only — no sheet-outline line for your cutting software to trip over; one DXF per distinct layout.
• Add Sheet menu with the ten most-used US stock sizes (grouped by short side) plus a custom-size dialog.
• Manual nest editing: drag, rotate, or nudge parts with spacing and overlap protection, undo/redo, and drop-to-contact.
• Sensible defaults: part spacing and sheet-edge margin start at 0.25″ (twice the material thickness for 1/8″ plate).

UI

• A single toolbar (no more ribbon tabs) with NEST always one click away, a consistent light theme, and roomier part cards.

Quality

• Intensive pre-release review of the whole update; all 8 issues found were fixed (nesting counts, spacing checks, PDF output, a crash with duplicate parts, and install docs).

Install: download SheetNest-1.1.0-win-x64.msi and double-click. Or use the zip (extract and run SheetNest.exe). SmartScreen may prompt the first time (the app isn't signed) → More info → Run anyway.

SheetNest 1.0.0

SheetNest 1.0.0 — the first release. 🔥

Free, open-source nesting software for sheet metal fabrication: SheetNest lays out your parts on the sheet for laser and plasma cutting so you waste less material and get more parts from every sheet.

Install (Windows 10/11, 64-bit)

1. Download SheetNest-1.0.0-win-x64.zip below.
2. Right-click the zip → Extract All (to anywhere, e.g. your Desktop).
3. Open the folder and run SheetNest.exe.

That's it — it's a self-contained build, so there's nothing else to install. Windows may show a SmartScreen prompt the first time (the app isn't signed yet) → More info → Run anyway.

What is it

True-shape nesting for sheet metal, built for laser and plasma cutting: it packs parts by their real outline, plans a full production run, and exports one cut-ready DXF per layout. Free and open source.

SheetNest is open-source software released under the MIT License — see LICENSE.