I have several 2d shapes that I need to nest on a sheet for laser cutting. At the moment, I have the planer surface from each mated coincident to the front plane of an assembly with a bounding box representing the material sheet size minus kerf. The issue that I am having is that translating the location (xy) is real easy. Controlling the rotation of individual parts is a real pain. If you click on the rotate component button the part kinda sorta slides around the screen and does not seem to be rotating around any specific point. At the moment I am having to set rotation angles through editing angular mates and it very slow progress.
I realize that there is automated nesting software available, but a human being will beat the best software 99% of the time with a bit of time investment. The material is quite costly and 15% savings adds up quite fast.
Is there a way to set the point that a part rotates about ( ie center of mass ) in an assembly by default so that its not necessary to create, and edit multiple times, mates for each part ( or instance thereof )? Am I missing a setting option somewhere?