Shared Stock

The Stock tab is the board every item is cut from. These settings apply to the whole design.

Panel and material

Thickness (mm) — the measured thickness of your sheet. This is the single most consequential number in a design: finger joints, slot depths and tab lengths are all cut from it. Measure the actual board. Sheet goods are routinely half a millimetre off nominal, and half a millimetre is the difference between a joint you tap together and one you hammer.

Board width / Board length (mm) — the sheet size the nester lays parts onto. If the job needs more than one, it fills additional sheets.

Material — a label carried through to the export and to MapleCAM, so the setup sheet says what to load.

Solid board edge — how the nester may treat the board's edges: whether it can run parts up to the edge, or must keep clear of it. Use clamp border when the sheet is held down at its edges and the cutter must not reach them.

Keep stock (mm) — margin held back from the board, for the same reason.

Cutting

Cutter diameter (mm) — the bit doing the cutting. A round cutter cannot cut a square internal corner, and it cannot enter a slot narrower than itself, so slots are widened to at least this. Set it to the tool you will actually use; too small a value produces a design your machine cannot cut, and too large loosens every joint.

Fit clearance (mm) — how much slack a joint gets. Zero is a theoretical perfect fit, which in real plywood means a joint you cannot assemble. A few tenths is normal; more for rough material or a machine with backlash.

Joint fit — the named fit preset (e.g. slip fit), which sets how tight interlocking parts are relative to the clearance above.

Tab recess (mm) — how far a plain tab sits below the surface it passes through, so nothing stands proud of a finished face.

Marking and layout

Board marks — whether the sheet carries its identifying marks (panel number, order number, registration scores).

Order no. — free text stamped on the job, so a cut sheet on a bench can be matched to the order it belongs to.

Nest in windows — whether the nester may place small parts inside the waste windows of larger ones. It packs tighter; leave it off if you would rather those cut-outs stayed intact.

Changing stock later

Any of these can change at any time and the whole design follows — that is the point of parameters. The one to be careful with is thickness: it changes every joint in every item, so a design cut successfully in one thickness should be re-checked in the preview after a change rather than sent straight to the machine.