A Generic Approach for Leather Nesting

This paper presents a novel nesting algorithm for leather manufacturing, such as automobile interior decoration, etc. After the profile of leather sheets and stencils is obtained using a digitizer, it is discretized to make the processing independent of the specific geometrical information. The constraints of the profile are regarded thoroughly. A heuristic bottom-left placement strategy is employed to sequentially place the stencils on sheets. The optimal placement sequence and rotation are determined using a simulated annealing based genetic algorithm that makes full use of the respective advantages of simulated annealing and genetic algorithm. A natural concise encoding method is developed to satisfy all the possible requirements of the leather nesting problem. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can not only be applied to the normal two-dimensional nesting problem, but is also especially suitable for the placement of multiple two-dimensional irregular stencils on multiple two-dimensional irregular sheets.