You have the tools. Now you just need the software.
A Fusion 360 add-in that copes every joint in your cage, nests the parts onto your sticks, and posts the G-code.
Tube Shop is pre-1.0. The Fusion 360 add-in ships first and the standalone Windows desktop app follows it. Windows only — it is the only platform we test on.
Everything you need to build cages
What the Fusion 360 add-in does, in the design you already have open — first cope to posted program.
Cope every joint in assembly order
Pick the tubes in the order you would install them. The first is the base and is never cut; every later tube is coped to the ones already standing, each as its own undo step. Ends are trimmed against the real tubes they meet and normalized to the square 2-axis cut a rotary notcher actually makes.
Change a tube, re-cut every joint
Every joint you cut is recorded in the design. Change a tube's OD, wall or position and rebuild them all from the current geometry in one undo step — after it tells you how many rebuild and which no longer resolve.
Joints that jig themselves
A heel tab on the coped end and the matching slot through the host wall, so the joint plugs together for tack-welding. Tabs go on only where the slot can actually be cut — an end with nowhere to seat stays a plain cope and says so, because a tab with nowhere to seat is a burr and a fit-up lie.
Saddle marks on the tube underneath
Every coped end scribes its landing footprint onto the tube it lands on, numbered with its assembly step. They come out on the host's printable wrap template and as CAM scribe ops, so tubes reach the bench already marked with what goes where.
Nesting onto the stock you have
Parts pack onto sticks with kerf, and with both bands the machine cannot use: the chuck jaws and the dead zone just past them. Set the stick length you buy and it packs to that, then tells you utilisation and what is left on the end.
G-code for the tube laser or rotary plasma
The nest posts to G-code for a tube laser or a rotary plasma table — GRBL, LinuxCNC, Mach3, and Mach3 with a rotary axis. The post is configurable, because no two controllers agree on anything.
Not in the add-in — coming with the desktop app
These need the standalone Windows app, which follows the add-in. One license covers both.
Design tube in 3D
Sketch chains of tube on work planes and drag the vertices until the cage fits. Every bend takes the real CLR of the die you picked, so what is on screen is a tube you can make. The Design Studio is the whole desktop app — it is where you work, not a preview window bolted onto something else.
Build inside a 3D scan
Import a scan of the actual vehicle — STL, OBJ, PLY, glTF or 3MF — and design the cage inside it. Half the scan hides across the symmetry plane, so you are looking at the tube you are placing instead of the sheet metal in front of it.
Recover tubes from a STEP model
A customer sends a solid model. Import the STEP and pull the tubes back out of it — OD, wall, centerline and bends — so you are working with a tube chain you can edit instead of geometry you can only look at.
From concept to cut in 4 steps
Model the Cage
Tube bodies in Fusion, however you like to build them. The add-in reads what is in the design.
Cope the Joints
Pick the tubes in install order. Every end is coped to the tubes already standing, cut into the real bodies.
Nest to CAM
Send the coped tubes to CAM in one pass. Parts pack onto your sticks with kerf and the chuck zone modeled.
Export & Cut
Write the G-code, bend sheets and wrap templates. Weld-ready output for the whole job.
Two front ends. One license.
The Fusion 360 add-in and the standalone Windows Desktop app — same pipeline, same numbers, one license covers both.
Refunds: It activates and runs on your machine or you get your money back — 30 days to report it. A change of mind is not a refund. Refund policy
Get build updates as they go out
What shipped, what broke, what changed. Sent when there is something worth sending, not on a schedule — and nothing else. One click to stop.