Changed my mind about CAM nesting, wasted $1,800 of 16ga before I got it

I used to nest everything by hand, just lay parts out on the sheet in Mastercam and drag them around until they looked tight. Two months ago my boss finally pushed the automatic nesting plugin on me after we ate a $1,800 loss on a run of 16 gauge brackets, and I fought him on it hard. I told him the software was dumb, it never rotates parts right, and I could beat it every time. Well, we ran the job both ways on a Tuesday, 300 parts on four sheets, and the auto nest fit them on three and a half with room to spare. My manual layout came up two parts short and I had to pull a fifth sheet just for those. The real thing that got me was the grain direction on the brushed stainless, the plugin kept every part running the same way and I never even thought about that. Now I still eyeball every nest it spits out, but I stopped fighting it on the first pass. What nesting settings are you guys running on thin gauge, because I'm still tuning the spacing and I keep getting a scalloped edge on the lead-ins.