Leather Optimal Nesting

Optimization nesting means on the given raw materials region of the plane, to layout a number of the same or different geometry parts without overlap as much as possible, and to achieve the goals of maximum utilization of raw materials. It widely used in the sheet metal, steel, aviation, marine, clothing, leather, paper products and glass processing industry etc., it is a key part of automated process in the manufacturing industry.In the leather industry world, China is a big country, but not a power. Compared with those developed countries, China's production technology in leather industry is in a relatively low level, Which still has a big hurdle from the intelligent and automated processing technology.This paper combines the key project of Fujian Science and Technology Plan(NO.2009H0032),with the shoe industry for Industrial background, studied the problem of leather's optimal layout, in order to guide the actual production industry, save raw materials, improve production efficiency and enhance the enterprise's competitiveness. The main work of this paper is as follow:(1) Analysing and improving the existing heuristic nesting algorithms, and proposed an effective nesting algorithm——IBLLH.(2) Combining with genetic algorithms (GA) and ant colony optimization algorithm (ACO), proposed hybrid genetic ant colony algorithm (HGA-ACO). Which as the upper optimization algorithm, combined with the base algorithm IBLLH, using intelligent algorithms to optimize the problem of leather nesting.(3) To the optimal layout research of irregular leather nesting problem, respectively from the two approaches which base on rectangular envelope or not fit polygon (NFP) to discuss the specific steps of the leather nesting. Obtained these affact factors'value range and verified its feasibility.