Optimal Two-Section Layouts for the Two-Dimensional Cutting Problem

When generating layout schemes, both the material usage and practicality of the cutting process should be considered. This paper presents a two-section algorithm for generating guillotine-cutting schemes of rectangular blanks. It simplifies the cutting process by allowing only one size of blanks to appear in any rectangular block. The algorithm uses an implicit enumeration and a linear programming optimal cutting scheme to maximize the material usage. The algorithm was tested on some benchmark problems in the literature, and compared with the three types of layout scheme algorithm. The experimental results show that the algorithm is effective both in computation time and in material usage