Software · Windows
Tube Shop
Design the cage. Get the numbers that cut it.
Tube Shop is one manufacturing pipeline with two front ends: a Fusion 360 add-in and a standalone Windows app that ships after it. Design a cage in either one and the output is the same — cut list, bend sheets with L/R/A rows, cope wraps you print and scribe, nested G-code, and DXF, STEP and IGES. Bends are built on the calibrated centerline radius of the die you are actually going to put in the machine.
Configuration
No release date is promised anywhere on this site. If a date cannot be held it is worth nothing to you.
Two hosts
Two front ends, one pipeline
Model wherever it suits you. Both call the same pipeline, so the cut list matches either way.
Host 01
Fusion 360 add-in
Runs inside Fusion and cuts real copes into real solid bodies — the fishmouth on screen is the fishmouth you weld. If your shop already lives in Fusion, nothing else changes.
Host 02
Design Studio
A standalone Windows app. Sketch tubes in 3D against a scanned cab or a STEP chassis — no Fusion required. The later release: it lands after the Fusion 360 add-in.
How it runs
From a set of centerlines to a stick of steel
Four stages, one pass, each handing the next exactly what it needs. Walk it with the arrow keys.
Pipeline
Design → cope → nest → G-code
One pass, four stages. Walk it with the arrow keys or tap a stage to see what it needs and what it hands to the next one.
Get the centerlines right
Draw the cage where it actually lives — in the Fusion add-in against the real model, or in the Design Studio against a 3D scan, a STEP file, or your own measurements. Either way you end up with the same thing: a tube chain per member.
In the cage on this page
6 tubes · 10 bends
Needs
- Something to build around — a scan, a STEP model, or measurements
- Tube OD and wall
- The die you own, by its centerline radius
Produces
- A centerline chain per tube
- Bend angles and rotations off that chain
- Developed length — the flat blank, before anything is bent
The Fusion 360 add-in and the standalone desktop app are two front ends on this one pipeline. Same stages, same math, same files out the far end.
What it does
The work it takes off you
The host column is load-bearing: the desktop app does not cut solid bodies, Fusion does. One host in a row means one host.
- Design tube in 3DDesktop
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 scanDesktop
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 modelDesktop
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.
- Copes cut into real bodiesFusion
In Fusion the cope is a real cut in a real solid body, not a picture of one. The joint on screen is the joint that gets welded, and that body is what feeds the STEP file and the wrap template.
- Bend sheets an operator can dial inFusion · Desktop
L/R/A rows in feed order: length of feed, rotation, angle. Bend allowance comes from that die's calibrated CLR and the springback you measured on it, so the developed length on the sheet is the blank you actually cut.
- Cope wraps printed 1:1Fusion · Desktop
Print the wrap, tape it on the tube, scribe the line, cut to it. For the joints you cut by hand, and for checking a laser file before you trust it.
- Nesting onto the stock you haveFusion · Desktop
Parts pack onto sticks with kerf, the chuck clamp zone the machine cannot reach, and the offcuts already on your rack. Set the stick length you buy and it packs to that.
- G-code for the tube laser or rotary plasmaFusion · Desktop
The nest posts to G-code for a tube laser or a rotary plasma table. The post is configurable, because no two controllers agree on anything.
- A depot both hosts readFusion · Desktop
Push a design out of the desktop app, pull it into Fusion, push it back. Revisions are numbered and immutable, so neither side overwrites the other and you can tell exactly which revision the shop cut from.
Try it
Everything below runs on one real cage
Developed length · all parts
410.3in
34.2 ft of 1.5 x 0.095 DOM, cut flat before anything goes in the bender — 34 ft 2.3 in. A shop orders stock in feet, so both are here.
No mock data. These panels run on 1986 Toyota Pickup — Main Cage, depot revision 18. Poke at the controls — the numbers move because the math re-runs.
Tubes
6
Bends
10
Coped ends
8
Stock & source
Main Hoop is the long part: 122.75 in developed, cut from a 240 in stick. That single line tells you whether the job fits your stock.
Cut list
| Tube | Bends | Copes | Dev in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main Hoop | 4 | 0 | 122.754 |
| Passenger A Pillar | 2 | 1 | 74.161 |
| Driver A Pillar | 2 | 1 | 74.149 |
| Upper Windshield Bar | 2 | 2 | 41.497 |
| Straight 1 | 0 | 2 | 49.285 |
| Straight 2 | 0 | 2 | 48.495 |
| Total · 6 tubes | 10 | 8 | 410.341 |
Nesting
Fewer sticks is less money
Every tube starts as a blank cut on the bandsaw before it sees the bender. How those pack decides how many sticks you buy and how much drop lands in the rack.
Drag the stick length down and watch a stick appear — take it below the longest blank and the nest breaks, because a cage tube does not get spliced.
Nest · rev 18 · 1.5 × 0.095 DOM
6 blanks, laid flat on the stick
A nest is the tube slit lengthwise and laid flat — length across, 4.712 in of circumference down. That is the surface the torch traverses, so it is the surface the shop nests on, and it is why a coped end here is a curve and not a straight edge. The blanks are the developed lengths out of the cage model; the cut curves are the torch paths the same model exports.
- Sticks
- 2
- Drop
- 65.3in
- Utilisation
- 85.5%
20 ft 0 in per stick. Longer stock buys fewer cuts and less drop, up to whatever your rack and your saw will take.
What the blade actually removes. One kerf is charged per piece, because every piece costs a cut. The depot recorded 0.060 in for this job.
Jaw grip plus the stock just past it the head cannot reach. Reserved off the chuck end and never nested. The app ships 2.00 in of jaw and no dead zone — set yours.
Nest preview. 2 sticks of 240 inch 1.5 × 0.095 DOM, 2.00 inches reserved at the chuck end of each. Each stick is drawn as the tube slit lengthwise and laid flat: length along the stick left to right, and 4.712 inches of circumference top to bottom. Stick 1 carries Main Hoop at 117.19 to 239.94 inches, Passenger A Pillar at 42.96 to 117.13 inches. Drop 40.96 inches. Stick 2 carries Driver A Pillar at 165.79 to 239.94 inches, Straight 1 at 116.45 to 165.73 inches, Straight 2 at 67.89 to 116.39 inches, Upper Windshield Bar at 26.33 to 67.83 inches. Drop 24.33 inches. Overall utilisation 85.5 percent. The table below lists every placement.
Parts pack right to left from the feed end. Click one to open its ends below.
Stock account
End profile — normalized torch path
The solid curve is what the machine cuts. The two dashed curves are the theoretical OD and ID intersections it was blended from: a rotary notcher cuts normal to the surface, so it cannot sit on both at once. Conservative takes whichever is deeper at every angle — the shop default, because the cut clears both surfaces and leaves file-to-fit overhang rather than an undercut. The shop samples 180 stations around the tube; every 3rd is plotted here.
Placement — stick by stickShow
Positions measured from the chuck end · all figures inches
| Stick | Part | Dev len | Start | End | End A | Cut A | End B | Cut B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Main Hoop | 122.75 | 117.19 | 239.94 | SQUARE | — | SQUARE | — |
| 1 | Passenger A Pillar | 74.16 | 42.96 | 117.13 | COPE 90° | 0.441 | SQUARE | — |
| 2 | Driver A Pillar | 74.15 | 165.79 | 239.94 | COPE 90° | 0.442 | SQUARE | — |
| 2 | Straight 1 | 49.28 | 116.45 | 165.73 | COPE 90° | 0.460 | COPE 90° | 0.460 |
| 2 | Straight 2 | 48.49 | 67.89 | 116.39 | COPE 90° | 0.608 | COPE 90° | 0.608 |
| 2 | Upper Windshield Bar | 41.50 | 26.33 | 67.83 | COPE 90° | 0.381 | COPE 90° | 0.381 |
| 6 of 6 blanks nested · 8 coped ends in this cage | 410.3 | Cage total 410.3 in | Drop 65.3 in | |||||
The packing here is a simplified preview, not the shipping nester. It sorts the blanks longest-first, drops each into the first stick it still fits, and charges one kerf per piece. The real nester does more than that: it rotates each tube to phase its cope against its neighbour’s, lets the two cut curves interlock past the body edge instead of leaving daylight between them, and banks your offcuts to reuse on the next job. All three pack tighter than what you see above. What is exact on this page is the geometry — the 6 developed lengths, the 8 cut profiles, and the 410.3 in of 1.5 × 0.095 DOM they add up to.
Bend sheets
What the operator reads at the machine
A bend sheet is three columns and a die: feed the tube L inches, roll it R degrees, pull A degrees, row after row until the tube is done.
Row 1’s rotation reads 0 — it is the datum the operator sets against the machine, and everything after it is measured from there. “Fixing” that to a nonzero number is what software written by someone who has never stood at a bender does.
Bend sheet
The rows the operator dials in
4 of the 6 tubes in this cage see the bender. Pick one and you get its L/R/A rows: length of feed, rotation, angle. Same rows the bend sheet prints, off the same model.
- Bends
- 4
- Developed
- 122.8in
L / R / A — Main Hoop
In feed order · all figures inches
| Row | L feed | R rot | A angle | CLR | Arc |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bend 1 | 26.47 | 0.00°datum | 18.87° | 6.24 | 2.06 |
| Bend 2 | 9.72 | 0.00° | 70.22° | 6.24 | 7.65 |
| Bend 3 | 30.98 | 0.00° | 70.22° | 6.24 | 7.65 |
| Bend 4 | 9.72 | 0.00° | 18.87° | 6.24 | 2.06 |
| End tangent | 26.47 | — | — | — | — |
Adds up to
The developed length is what the bandsaw cuts. Feed plus arc is the same number arrived at the other way round.
Bend detailShow
Feed the tube 26.47 in, roll it 0.00°, pull 18.87° on the 6.24 in die. Repeat down the sheet. The diagram draws the bend angle true; the feed leg is schematic.
Feed lengths are the straight runs between bends, measured on the model’s centerline. Feed plus arc adds up to the developed length — the differences you see in the last decimal are rounding in the exported coordinates, not slop in the math. Rotation on row 1 is the datum: the operator sets it against the machine, and rows 2 and on are relative to it.
Outputs
What comes out the far end
Files you can hand to a machine or tape to the bender. The cut list, bend sheets, wraps, nested G-code and DXF are the same files from either host — both call the same export and the same CAM.
STEP and IGES are the exception: out of the add-in they are the modeled solid, copes already cut in; out of the desktop app they are built from the tube records instead.
- Cut listPDF
What the bandsaw operator holds. Every part with its developed length — the blank you cut before it goes in the bender.
- Bend sheetPDF
One tube per sheet, L/R/A rows in the order they are fed.
- L/R/A and XYZ bend tablesPDF
Every bent tube in the job on one sheet — the L/R/A rows, and the XYZ apex points that go with them. For checking the whole job at once instead of tube by tube.
- Cope wrap templatePDF
Printed at 1:1. Wrap it on the tube, scribe, cut.
- Nested G-codeNC
Parts packed on sticks and posted for your tube laser or rotary plasma.
- Flat / developed DXFDXF
The tube unrolled flat with its cope profiles, for cutting or for layout.
- STEPSTEP
Solid geometry, bent or developed. For the customer, the shop, or the next CAM seat. From the add-in it is the modeled body itself, copes already cut; from the desktop app it is built from the tube records.
- IGESIGS
Bent or developed, for the software and controllers that still want IGES. Same split as STEP: the add-in dumps the modeled body, the desktop app constructs it from the records.
- BOMPDF
Tube size, wall, material and total footage — what to order and how much of it.
- Setup sheetHTML
One sheet per stick, printable from the browser: stock length, kerf, utilisation, where each part sits, the cut order end to start, and the bend schedule for every tube on that stick.
Licensing
One licence
A perpetual licence, priced and settled. One licence covers both front ends.
Perpetual
$3,995.00 · one-time
Buy it once, keep it. The first 12 months of maintenance are included; $500 a year after that. The Fusion 360 add-in and, when it lands, the Desktop app on the same licence.
Questions
Straight answers
Do I need Fusion 360?
No. The desktop app is standalone — design, cope, nest and export with no Fusion installed. It is the later release: the Fusion add-in ships first. The add-in is for shops already working in Fusion, where it models the cage as solid bodies and cuts the copes into them. Both call the same pipeline, so the numbers match.
What bender does it support?
It is die driven, not machine driven. You pick a die, run a test bend, and enter what you measured. That die keeps your real CLR and your springback, and every bend sheet after it is built on your numbers instead of a table out of a book.
Will it run my tube laser?
It nests the parts onto sticks and posts G-code. The post is configurable so it can be matched to your controller. Send us what your machine expects and we will look at it.
Is it Windows only?
Yes, today. The desktop app is a Windows application, and Windows is the only platform we test on.
Can I get my geometry out?
STEP and IGES, bent or developed. DXF for the flat. And the depot files are JSON on your own disk — numbered revisions you can read, back up and keep. Your geometry is yours.
How does a design move between the desktop app and Fusion?
Through the depot. One host pushes a numbered revision, the other pulls it. Revisions are immutable, so pulling never quietly overwrites what the other side was working on.
Does it check my sanctioning body's rulebook?
No. It does not know SFI, NHRA or FIA rules and it certifies nothing. Tube size, wall thickness and geometry for your class are on you and your inspector.
When does 1.0 ship?
We are not putting a date on it. A date we cannot hold is worth nothing to you.
Perpetual licence $3,995.00 with the first 12 months of maintenance included, then $500/yr.
See pricing