STUDY ON THE TRADE-OFF BETWEEN THE NESTING AND THE CUTTING PATH DETERMINATION PROBLEMS

The integrated problem of packing irregular parts and minimum cutting path consists of investigating the compromise between the solutions of two well-known problems in the literature: the irregular strip packing problem, also known as the nesting problem, and the cutting path determination problem. The first problem seeks to determine the placement of smaller items, typically referred to as parts, on a board of fixed height and unlimited length, with the goal of finding the shortest length layout, ensuring that all parts are entirely within the board and without overlap. From the established layout, the second problem arises: determining the path that the cutting tool should take to cut the parts within the layout. Decisions made during the packaging step influence the determination of the cutting path, and more compact layouts do not always generate smaller cutting paths. In this work, a solution method for the discrete version of the integrated problem was proposed, in which the packaging is performed from a grid of points and the cutting is performed by parts, starting at any vertex of each part.