I am trying to nest a set of 100 unique shapes onto the minimum number of paper sheets in order to lasercut a lampshade.
So far, I have been using open nest (ran it for 4,000 iterations) and rhinonest. My “record” has been 7 sheets of (335mm x 470mm) with 3mm spacing between outlines =)
However, this only provides an average efficiency of 40% surface area and I am sure that one can do better.
How many different geometries are involved? Are all sheets containing an equal share of the variants, etc?
If you provide more info it is easier to tackle the problem. For example, list the unique geometries, and tell us how many of each must be contained in the final result (how else could anyone know if the end result contains the number of each geometry you need?).
All this can be figured out based on the content in your file, but it requires useless work to find out which you already know the answer(s) to.
Hi Rolf, thanks for your comment. Sorry I should have been more precise. All 100 pieces are unique and can’t be mirrored as they should be cut and assembled with the same side facing up.
The final result should be those 100 unique shapes all being nested within less than 7 sheets.
