LineSight vs SigmaNEST: Coil Planning and Plate Nesting Are Different Jobs

What SigmaNEST does well

SigmaNEST is CAD/CAM nesting software from SigmaTEK Systems in Cincinnati. It programs laser, plasma, oxyfuel, waterjet and punch machines and handles heavy plate burning and multi-torch beveling. Remnant control is part of its service-center offer, which matters on plate, where a large offcut is real money.

It speaks to service centers directly. Its fabrication centers page says "steel service centers and job shops are continually challenged to maximize part quality" and offers "integrated quoting, scheduling, job tracking, inventory and remnant control" for them. Tampa Bay Steel, a service center with laser, plasma and waterjet systems, deployed it in 2011 for material optimization, part cutting and cost estimation.

The company has changed hands and names along the way. Battery Ventures acquired it in 2018, the company renamed itself from SigmaNEST to SigmaTEK with its Connected Shop Suite, and its site now says it is part of the Sandvik group.

Where SigmaNEST does not reach

Its scope is parts on plates and sheets. We found nothing on its pages about slitting coil into strips, choosing a master coil for an order, PIW or knife setups. That is a statement about scope rather than a shortcoming: nesting a bracket on a sheet and slitting a coil into five widths are different geometry problems with different rules.

What LineSight covers, and what it does not

On flat-rolled, LineSight reads open orders and coil inventory from the ERP in real time and builds slitting and cut-to-length plans that put more of each coil into orders. It works to gauge, grade, width, PIW, ID/OD, edge conditioning, knife setups, multi-pass, coil weights and must-ship dates. On long products, it builds saw cut plans that combine lengths from different orders on the same bar and follow end-crop and minimum-remnant rules.

Every plan shows what is cut from which coil and why, and a person approves it before anything goes to the ERP or the floor. LineSight is publicly live with PS Data, INVEX and Enmark.

It does not nest parts on plate or sheet. If a burn table is your main line, LineSight will add little there.

Which tool for which order

Forty gussets burned from 1-inch plate

Shapes on a plate, a torch path, a remnant worth saving for next week. SigmaNEST's job.

Twenty tons of 14 gauge cold rolled slit into five widths

Which coils to open, how to arrange the widths, how much edge trim to accept, which orders share a setup. LineSight's job.

Cut-to-length sheets that later go to the laser

LineSight plans the CTL run from coil to sheet. The nesting tool then lays parts onto those sheets. Neither vendor publishes a connector to the other, so the handoff runs through your ERP and inventory.

Other plate nesting tools service centers compare

If plate is the deciding factor, two other nesting products are worth a look alongside SigmaNEST.

• Lantek: nesting software for sheet metal and plate. Lantek describes Askon Demir Çelik as one of the leading steel service centers in Turkey; it runs Lantek Expert across its laser, oxy-cut and plasma machines and uses it to track remnants.
• ProNest: Hypertherm's nesting software for CNC cutting tables. In 2019 Hypertherm introduced subscriptions for ProNest LT, the edition for smaller tables, starting at $29.99 a month.

Pricing

The bottom line

Different machines, different geometry, different software. A service center with plate tables and coil lines can reasonably run both, each where it fits. If your losses are on the coil side, LineSight is built for that: Elite Steel cut its scrap rate 2.9 points and added about $850K in annualized revenue on its slitting lines. If they are on the plate side, look at SigmaNEST and its peers. To see what a point of coil scrap is worth to you, try the scrap calculator.