So the actual challenge, if you are interested, is to nest 3 sets of the circles into 5 sheets of 1220 x 2440mm.
I was thinking something like this but with 3 sets of the circles…
I wonder if this could be the basis of some AI nesting software… Current nesting software seems to be brute force, try every iteration or just start at bottom left and place parts in order of area into the corner.
This is just circles so simple in terms of rotating parts to fit better but I like the way you can shuffle parts by eye and then let the circle packing take over.
It was often quite easy to beat the nesting software by eye on one or 2 sheets worth of parts as the human eye is good at this sort of problem. Often the nesting software is used mostly for time saving or avoiding tedious operations but actual material efficiency is not always crucial.
Maybe the combinations needed to get a good nest are less here as it would be a few different strategies for how to drop the initial layout into the sheets rather than every possible combination?
It beats current nesting software for enjoyment anyway!
If anyone has one of the nesting plugins, please try Daniel’s puzzle above… can you nest all the parts onto the 1965x1965 square or smaller and how long does it take to do that?
