NESTING OF 2-DIMENSIONAL IRREGULAR PARTS USING A SHAPE REASONING HEURISTIC

A technique is outlined for the allocation or 'nesting' of irregular p arts into arbitrarily shaped resources. Placements are generated by ma tching complementary shapes between the unplaced parts and the remaini ng areas of the stock material. The part and resource profiles are cha racterized by varying levels of detail using geometric 'features' at e ach stage of processing to intelligently select and place parts of the resource. Practical implementation issues are described and the perfo rmance of the algorithm contrasted to previously published works. Data from a marine fabrication facility is used for testing. (C) 1997 Else vier Science Ltd.