Reports, quotes and part labels
Three things leave the office with a nest: the setup sheet for the operator, the quote for the customer, and labels for the parts. Reports and quotes need Business or the demo. This guide walks through the controls and shows how the quote total is built.
Create/Edit Report opens Nest Report for the current plate. It lists the plate description, dimensions, material and heat number, the part outlines and quantities, cut and rapid length, pierces, estimated run time and cost, and the declared tools and consumables. Quantities count the placed parts that aren't suppressed. It's a planning sheet, not a record that the parts were cut. Print opens the printer dialog; Preview shows the page first.
Report Format sets the page size, Company Name, margins in inches (frame inset, left, right, top, bottom) and which sections to show: plate image, parts table, time estimates. Page sizes are Letter portrait and landscape, ANSI B (17×11) and C (22×17), A4 portrait and landscape, and A3. Margins are entered in inches even for metric pages. The format is saved with the nest. The report has no Save PDF button. If you have a PDF printer in your Windows printer list, you can print to it; check the document it produces.
Quote needs Business or the demo and a current program estimate: if tool paths are missing or stale it asks you to Create Tool Paths first. If the job is linked to a work order, the customer and order details fill in for you. Otherwise they're blank, so check them before anything goes to a customer. Fields: Customer, Quote No, Nest, Date, Plate, PO / Order, Pricing, Sheets, Setup $, Extra Labor hrs, Markup %, Notes. The parts table shows Part, Per Sheet, Total, Weight, Cost Each and Price Each.
Per sheet: run-time hours times the machine hourly rate, plus run-time hours times the labour rate, plus pierces times the cost per pierce, plus the material cost of the consumed area. That's multiplied by Sheets, which repeats this nest; it doesn't gather other layouts in a multi-sheet job. Setup $ is added once, and Extra Labor hrs times the labour rate is added once, on top of operator time while the machine runs. Markup % is then added to that subtotal. Markup is a percentage on cost, not a gross-margin target. A rate or material value you haven't entered comes through as zero, not as an error, so check the inputs.
Save PDF writes the customer document to a path you choose. Print opens a preview. Save Quote needs a quote number and writes a .gcmquote record under that number; saving the same number again overwrites it, so keep numbers unique. The quote isn't an invoice: it doesn't take payment and it doesn't email itself. Company details on the document come from the company profile settings.
Part Labels needs placed parts, not a finished program. Choose the Label Stock, then One label per piece or One label per part (with quantity), and the Sheets of this nest multiplier. Print On Each Label offers a Code 128 barcode of the part name, job and order, material and thickness, date and company. Presets are Avery 5163/8163 (2×4 in, 10 per page), 5164/8164 (3⅓×4 in, 6 per page), 5160/8160 (1×2⅝ in, 30 per page) and 5262 (1⅓×4 in, 14 per page); check alignment on your printer and stock. Label counts include every placed part, including any you suppressed from cutting, so review the Labels column before printing.
Questions people ask
Yes. Reports and quotes are part of the Business functionality the demo includes. They are documents, not G-code output, so the demo's G-code restrictions don't apply to them.