Two-stage approach for nesting in two-dimensional cutting problems using neural network and simulated annealing

Nesting of two-dimensional patterns on a given raw sheet has applications in a number of industries. It is a common problem often faced by designers in the shipbuilding, garment making, blanking die design, glass and wood industries. This paper presents a new two-stage layout approach for nesting two-dimensional patterns by using the self-organization assisted layout and simulated annealing. The proposed nesting approach consists of two stages: initial layout stage and layout improvement stage. This heuristic algorithm generates a 'good' initial layout by using the self-organization assisted layout (SOAL) algorithm and then improves the layout by using the simulated annealing (SA) algorithm. Some examples are treated for showing the effectiveness of this approach in nesting the two-dimensional irregular patterns with and without holes.