Any way to nest existing G-Code jobs?

[sp8472]

I'm not entirely sure if this is even possible, and the only lead I've heard thus far was not terribly promising, but I'd like to ask here to see if there is another option.

Background: We manufacture various sizes of simple custom circuitboards as a part of our business, using a router and small milling bits to etch isolation paths to create circuit traces, and drill out the holes. We previously had a small router that was specifically intended for this purpose, which used its own proprietary software. Unfortunately, its size was quite limited and it required constant babysitting to keep changing tools, so we purchased a large format CNC router that accepts standard G-Code, and it also features an automatic toolchanger.
Our in-house programming expert put together a script that converts our individual circuitboard files directly to G-Code, so we can now run jobs on this large router.

What I'm looking for: Something that can take multiple existing G-code jobs and nest them together so that we can batch a bunch of jobs at once. (Nesting in the circuitboard software takes longer than we'd like, as the software isn't really cut out to do very large boards, or nesting.)

It doesn't need to be terribly complex or snazzy, just something that can fit a bunch of G-code rectangles and their associated artwork into a predefined area, and be able to rotate them by 90° for a better fit.

So, is this something that exists in any fashion? The one lead I got said that doing something like this requires some manner of reverse-engineering software package that'd cost >$10k. I guess in my mind, it sounds like just a bunch of coordinate math - the 90° rotation functionality aside, it's just a matter of finding the size of the first job, and then taking the second job and move its origin by a certain amount, and quick sift through the text in its code to find and alter the coordinates by the necessary amount.
We'd just prefer to find and buy something now rather than have to spend the time and resources developing yet another piece of software in-house.


Thank you!

 

[Walterke]

swapping x for y coordinates

that would also mirror the piece. Not sure if that is a problem for you.

You'd also have trouble with any arc-like coding.

NX 7.5
Teamcenter 8

 

[sp8472]

Update on this: Apparently the hard part, at least as far as our programmer was concerned, was building the GUI to put in rectangles that were linked to specific G-code jobs, then be able to manipulate them, and also nest time automatically. The G-code part didn't take too long, by comparison. Once the program has all the orientations and origins, it's able to make the necessary changes in each job, and then put them all together into one large job.

So we've nearly got our own in-house program that can take G-code jobs, rotate them 90° if needed, and nest them, along with snap-to-grid functionality. He's also working on automatic collision detection, if someone's trying to move the individual jobs around manually.
Basic tool and path optimization will come next.