Nesting software that works with Fulcrum

A worked example in the units a US shop buys in. The order is 120 brackets and 40 end plates, all 10 ga mild steel at 0.135 in (3.4 mm), cut on the fiber laser.

1. Fulcrum picks the group. Its prerequisites for nesting are a raw material on the BOM, a cutting operation, and a DXF file of the part. Nest planning then pulls DXF files across orders and recommends work to nest together, by material, machine type and the current production schedule. Lapas has no part in that: whether those 160 parts belong on one plate is a scheduling decision, and Fulcrum holds the due dates.
2. Create New Nest, take the zip. Fulcrum packages all the DXF files for each selected job into a single zip file. Download it and unzip it.
3. Upload to Lapas, set quantities. 120 and 40 against the two part numbers. No cap on parts per job, so a group spanning several orders is just a larger upload.
4. Set the plate in inches. 48 x 96 in (1,219 x 2,438 mm) for a standard 4 x 8 ft sheet, 60 x 120 in (1,524 x 3,048 mm) for a 5 x 10. Lapas works in inches or millimetres, so enter it the way the rack is labelled, and a drop is just a smaller plate: 48 x 60 in (1,219 x 1,524 mm) shows whether the order fits it first.
5. Set part spacing to cover kerf. Kerf is the width your beam removes, measured on your own machine rather than taken off a chart: roughly 0.004 to 0.012 in (0.1 to 0.3 mm) for a fiber laser on 10 ga. Inch values go in as decimals, so 0.008 rather than a fraction. Set part spacing to cover it plus the clearance you need, which on thin stainless is set by how much heat the web between two cuts will take. See what kerf is.
6. Nest, then fix what it placed badly. True-shape nesting works on the real outlines, so a flanged bracket interlocks with the next one. Drag or rotate any part by hand afterwards; the export reflects the edit.
7. Export the DXF and the PDF report. The DXF is the nested layout for your CAM step. The report carries plate count, utilization and the part placement list.
8. Drop the PDF back into Fulcrum. It imports material usage per part, machine time per part, the number of setups and which parts are located on each setup, then allocates machine time and material costs to the individual parts and predicts remnant sizes. Grouped work then shows as a single operation in Job Tracking, where operators confirm completed parts and remnants.

Two of those eight steps are a person moving a file. Whether removing them is worth an integration budget is arithmetic on your own plate price and plate count: the ROI calculator works it out, and pricing has what the two plans cost.

Lapas writes nothing into Fulcrum. No connector, no API link, no plugin, nothing to install. It does not read your BOM, your raw material records, your routing or your due dates, so plate size and material are entered per job. It creates no work orders and posts nothing to inventory: remnant sizes are predicted by Fulcrum and confirmed by operators in Job Tracking, entirely on the Fulcrum side of the line. Nor does it replace your CAM: the production path is the nested DXF into the software that assigns cut order, power, speed and gas, and while G-code export exists on both plans for simple 2-axis work, it has not been validated across controllers and machines, so check it before you cut.