ENGINEERING STUDY / NESTINGJS—02
Round-Bar Nesting and Operator Cutlist
An Excel/VBA planning system that groups bar demand, compares stock plans, generates cutlists, and visualizes standard and optimized nests.
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AutomationmacroWorkflow development
SolidWorks BOM to Round-Bar Planner Bridge
A SolidWorks VBA bridge that reads a drawing BOM, populates a round-bar nesting workbook, recalculates Excel, runs ProcessJob, and saves the result.
Read code & workflow ↗
Explore the code, workflow and required setup.
MY FOCUSMapped BOM headers, preserved item numbers, populated the workbook table, and orchestrated Excel recalculation and processing.
ENGINEERING VALUE
Connects design documentation with material planning while retaining an operator review gate.
ENGINEERING STUDY / NESTINGJS—02
Engineering concept illustration.
01 / THE PROBLEM
The engineering challenge.
Cut-list data must move from a drawing BOM into a planning workbook without retyping or losing traceability.
02 / CONSTRAINTS
What the solution must consider.
- Header order may vary, skipped drawing items must remain skipped, and import must not silently launch production processing.
03 / ENGINEERING APPROACH
Reasoning before geometry.
01
Engineering method
Resolve headers by label, copy visible BOM rows to the named Excel input table, and automatically run ProcessJob to generate the plan.
02
Workflow features
Visible BOM header mapping; Template copy and structured table population; Item-number preservation; Automatic Excel recalculation and ProcessJob invocation; Compatibility with a separate Excel PDF-import workflow.
04 / DESIGN & IMPLEMENTATION
Connecting intent to execution.
Version 1.4 copies the workbook template into the drawing folder, imports eligible BOM rows, restores Excel application state, recalculates through Excel.Application, invokes ProcessJob and saves the workbook. PDF drag/drop is a separate Excel-side workflow.
- Visible BOM header mapping
- Template copy and structured table population
- Item-number preservation
- Automatic Excel recalculation and ProcessJob invocation
- Compatibility with a separate Excel PDF-import workflow
05 / VALIDATION
The checks behind the design.
Workflow development
Excel-side project validation records report compile/import/print/export checks, 129 validated pieces and zero quantity mismatches. SolidWorks-to-Excel deployment also requires a drawing-session integration test.
129
Validated cut pieces
Project validation summary; measured.
0
quantity mismatches
Project validation summary; measured.
06 / OUTCOME
The value of the work.
Connects design documentation with material planning while retaining an operator review gate.
THE ENGINEERING PRINCIPLE
Automate the workflow, including its failure cases.
Reliable engineering automation needs input checks, predictable output, clear diagnostics and a way to verify that quantities and references were preserved. Saving clicks alone is not sufficient evidence of correctness.
A question for a technical conversation
What would you test when the input is incomplete, duplicated or outside the tool’s supported scope?
LET’S BUILD SOMETHING THAT WORKS
Good design belongs
on the shop floor.
Considering a role in mechanical design, manufacturing methods,
fixture design, or estimation? Let’s connect.