When your part geometry gets tricky, designing soft jaws can feel like the longest five minutes of the job - except it never takes just five minutes!

At CloudNC, our own shop studies show that modelling, corner-relieving and clearance-checking a pair of jaws routinely costs 30–60 minutes per set-up, time your spindle could be turning.

CloudNC Soft Jaw Designer collapses that work into a couple of clicks, right inside Autodesk Fusion or Mastercam. No exports, no extra apps - just pick your jaw blanks, position them around the part and hit Generate.

Seconds later you’re looking at production-ready jaws, complete with allowance and corner relief, still fully editable in native CAD features.

We want people to use our Soft Jaw Designer so they can see the value and utility of all of our software - so we’re letting any Fusion or Mastercam customer use it for free. No strings attached and no hidden costs - just a tool that does what it is supposed to, saving you time and energy.

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Why users love the Soft Jaw Designer

• Up to 90% faster fixture design
  Internal benchmarks show most programmers reclaim 40–50 minutes per job.
  
  
• First-clamp confidence
  Automatically applied allowances stop crushed walls and chatter-inducing looseness.
  
  
• Handles any geometry
  Organic surfaces, draft angles, free-form curves - Soft Jaw Designer adapts to them all.
  
  
• Keeps your workflow clean
  Jaws appear on their own component, organised just as you’d have modelled them by hand.
  
  
• Ready for machining in moments
  Pair Soft Jaw Designer with CAM Assist to auto-program toolpaths for both jaws and part and push straight to the machine.

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How it works

1. Select your part – import or open any body.
   
2. Position soft-jaw blanks – pick bodies to define the jaw blank geometry, or leave this selection blank to create the geometry directly in the Soft Jaw Designer.
   
3. Click Generate – beyond just a Boolean operation, the Soft Jaw Designer will ensure that bosses and other features on the part will not bind when the jaws are open and shut.
   
4. Refine if you wish – add chamfers, fillet, clamps or engraving exactly as you do today.

From blank blocks to finished fixtures in less time than it takes to brew a coffee!

Real-world impact

• Free up time to program – when fixtures take minutes, you’ve got more time to get other key work done.
  
  
• Unlock complex work – reliable jaws give you the confidence to accept organic, high-value parts.
  
  
• Boost spindle utilisation – less CAD grind means more cutting hours every shift.
  

Try it free today

To use Soft Jaw Designer, simply download the plug-in, open any challenging part and turn soft-jaw modelling from a half-hour chore into a five-second habit.

Why wrestle with sketches and booleans when you could be machining? Fire up CloudNC Soft Jaw Designer and let your CAM package do the heavy lifting - so you can get back to making chips.

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