3 ms·
It's not exactly the same but cutting shapes out of pieces of material in ways that waste as little as possible is surely related. The paper industry is very i
by kwhitefoot 5y ago
It's not exactly the same but cutting shapes out of pieces of material in ways that waste as little as possible is surely related. The paper industry is very interested in a specialised subset of this kind of thing. So are factories that make transformer cores. The cores are made by stacking many (sometimes hundreds) of thin sheets of steel cut from rolls. Good quality core steel is expensive so it is important to waste as little as possible by making the cuts in the proper places.
- sidpatil 5y agoThese are specifically known as cutting stock problems [1]. Example of a possible application: I used to work at a home improvement retailer, and one of my responsibilities was to cut plywood boards for customers, to the dimensions they specified. I'd often wonder if the cuts I was making were optimal. The constraints were that any cuts I made had to go all the way through the entire piece, and that the blade itself was 1/8" thick. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_stock_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_stock_problem
- madcaptenor 5y agoA similar problem shows up in quilting - fabric comes in rolls of about 44 inches wide (called "WOF" for "width of fabric" in some patterns). (Occasionally there are other pieces - for example you can buy "fat quarters" which are 18 by 22 inches, i. e. half a yard by half WOF.) You may need many small pieces, say rectangles or triangles a few inches on a side. And so it's natural to ask what the best way to cut them is - either with minimal waste, or with making the smallest number of cuts.