Selecting by color or other way to do many parts?

CAD/CAM Software Tips MakerCam
1

I’ve been relatively happy using MakerCam for single parts. But now I want to cut 32 identical pieces out of a sheet of plywood, and I need the gcode to have all 32 in one go (they don’t fit into nice boxes, so I’ve had to nest them intricately to get them all to fit, and need the machine to stay calibrated between them all)

I can easily nest them all on a 47.5x95.5 rectangle using Inkscape to produce an SVG file that has all the parts.

BUT, each part has 8 holes that I need to drill before I profile the part out. I’m NOT looking forward to SHIFT-SELECTING 256 holes for the drill operation (or re-doing my drill operation 32 times after shift_selecting 8 holes…). [Or shift-selecting 32 outsides for the profile for that matter…]

Is there some way to use color in an SVG file and tell MakerCam to “select all green” objects?

I notice that makercam has a “nesting” menu, but it appears that you need to create all 32 parts before you can have it “nest” them. (Plus, I’ve already manually nested them in inkscape…)

I’m not opposed to using a different CAM software, but it would need to run on Linux or in a web browser on linux, and I’d prefer it be open source or free.

Any suggestions on a smart way to do these multiple duplicate parts in MakerCam?
Thanks,
Jay

2

Could you do them as separate jobs, that is, export two separate svg files from Inkscape? As long as you follow the same procedure for scaling and placing, they should line up.

3

I hadn’t thought of that, but I can’t think of any reason it shouldn’t work! Thanks!

I’ll be sure to manually drill a little hole at the “home” position just in case I have to reset between the jobs.

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4

Not in makercam, but this is easy in InkScape:

With one of your circles selected, click Edit → Select Same → Stroke Color (or whatever common fill/stroke attribute the objects have)

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5

You can also select everything in makercam, then de-select the 32 outlines. Still not great, but better than 256 individual selections.

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6

That’s not a bad idea…I may do the slight amount of extra work just to keep everything in a single gcode file…