Improvements about automatic lay-panning for irregular shapes on plain fabric

This paper deals with in optimal allocation of irregular shapes on a single sheet. The proposed algorithm is particularly adapted to optimize the layout of pieces of clothes in garment industry. The characteristics reached by this algorithm allow to fit it in a flexible continuous cutting frame. After a remind of our shapes description device, we present the problem modelling through the tree of possible states. The search of a sub-optimal way in the state space representation is carried out with /spl epsi/-admissible algorithm: A/spl epsi/. The last one has been modified in order to provide a better solution in the same time. The principle is to yield an initial solution, and then to prune the tree in removing the generated nodes of which estimated cost is more than the last higher bound. The higher bound is processed either by the initial solution, or by the last best solution.<>