A clamp is an avoidance area, so a clamp that only partly reaches a
sheet (for example centered at 60.5" on a 60" sheet, or near the
origin) now keeps its whole 1.5" x 0.625" footprint instead of being
clipped to the sheet; clamps wholly beyond the sheet are still left
off. Job validation accepts a zone that hangs past the sheet edges and
still rejects one that does not reach the sheet at all. Both packing
lanes already block keep-outs extending past the bin; a hanging-clamp
solve through Rectangles, Irregular and Default keeps every part clear
of the whole inflated footprint.
User decision 2026-10-12, settling the plan's pending D2 question.
New and BOM import give a new nest the machine clamp rail from
clamps.json when it is enabled, converted to the nest's units; with the
default (off) settings nests are created exactly as before. An
unreadable or partly invalid settings file warns once per session.
Nest > Clamps... edits the current nest's rail: clamp width and depth
and a sorted list of X centers with Add/Remove. OK applies the rail to
every plate (Cancel discards the edits); Load Machine Defaults only
fills the dialog; Save as Machine Defaults writes clamps.json at once
and is labelled as not undone by Cancel. The dialog refuses to open
while nesting or a plate action runs. Its decisions live in the
Linux-tested ClampRailEditor; the form only renders and forwards input.
PlateView draws clamp zones as translucent hatched amber rectangles
over the sheet and parts and repaints when they change. They take part
in no hit test, selection or sequencing.
The engine argument's description now names every built-in engine with what
it suits, so a model can choose one; omitting it still means Default. The fill
tools resolve an omitted strategy to Fill directly instead of through the
session's whole-job default. Front-end tests cover the MCP and console
defaults and keep the description in step with the registry's built-ins.
Default is the engine every front end uses when none is named. It now runs
Irregular, then Rectangles, checks both layouts with NestLayoutCheck and keeps
the best: valid first, then fewest unplaced parts, then lowest salvage-credited
cost; ties keep Irregular. A candidate that throws or returns nothing is
skipped, cancellation stops the search, and only the chosen layout's plate
commits are reported. Neither engine wins every job in the lane benchmarks,
and Rectangles adds little time while also covering Irregular's invalid
layouts.
The registry lists Default first and no longer maps the name to Fill; fill
strategy callers still read Default as Fill. A future circle/ring engine joins
as another candidate.
Desktop Auto Nest, Console --autonest, MCP autonest_plate and the API
NestRunner all run through NestPipeline, so nothing calls the old
orchestration any more.
Delete MultiPlateNester (with MultiPlateNestOptions, MultiPlateResult,
PlateResult, PartClass and PartSortOrder), PlateOptimizer and
PlateOptimizerResult, plus their tests. The explicit-strategy contract
those tests checked now lives at PlateFillService.ResolveStrategy, which
keeps its null-means-Default, canonical-name and unknown-name tests.
CreateFiller loses its internal visibility, which only the deleted
orchestrators used.
This breaks source and binary compatibility for external callers of the
removed types; whole-job callers use NestPipeline.Run or INestingEngine.
Adds docs/nesting-engines.md: which engine suits which jobs, the old plug-in
names the registry maps, retired engines, and the rule that an engine change
lands only when it beats that engine's current benchmark result with every
layout valid. README, release and automatic-nesting docs drop the bundled
plug-in wording; AGENTS.md now places built-in engines in
OpenNest.Engine/NestingEngines and keeps only external plug-ins out of the
solution.
aj