Efficiently orienting and laying out parts for machining

[tomi_wunder]

Hello,
I've designed an attachment part for a notebook holder that consists of four different parts (three of them are needed twice).

screenshot1.png (324.18 KiB) Viewed 293 times

All parts should be milled out of a 15mm sheet of plywood. However I've got difficulties getting all the parts oriented and laid out on the XY plane for machining. I mean, I could use the draft workbench to first make a clone and then rotate and move every part until it is in place for further processing. That however feels unnecessarily complex and tedious (especially on a more complex project). I'm thus wondering, whether there's any sort of simplification for that frequent task. Something like #1 select face to be put flat on the XY plane, #2 select (corner) point to be put on the XY plane origin, #3 specify multiplicity, rotation and translation in case multiple parts should be machined in one job.

I would greatly appreciate your help!
Thanks in advance!

OS: Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.18.16131 (Git) AppImage
Build type: Release
Branch: (HEAD detached at 0.18.3)
Hash: 3129ae4296e40ed20e7b3d460b86e6969acbe1c3
Python version: 3.6.7
Qt version: 5.6.2
Coin version: 4.0.0a
OCC version: 7.3.0
Locale: C/Default (C)

[chrisb]

It is similar to your idea, but it is already prepared when you create a Job: The job creates already a clone Job->Model->... which you have to turn as needed.

To create repeated paths you can use PathArray.

[osmanager]

I recently started using FreeCAD and found this video great for understanding setting up jobs for machining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjlfL5IQxzI&t=322s

Watch the whole series to get the full understanding.

Thanks to @sliptonic for the videos