Multipurpose Layout Planner

There are several kinds of layout problems, most of them concerning the allocation of a set of planar objects over a delimited planar area. There are several forms of representation of such problems, depending on their application. In order to treat these layout problems in a unified way, we propose an object-oriented approach that decomposes the problems in generic entities needed by a problem processing engine, the Layout Planner, to form a problem solver instance. This paper concerns the description of a tool for development of decision support systems for layout planning, where the entities are mapped into objects that own a dynamic behaviour. The user describes his/her problem instance in a graphical way using visualisation forms of the objects. A fertile application field of such DSS is in CIM activities such as machine layout and cutting. First, we identify models and approaches for layout problems and present an architecture for the DSS generator and then discuss a case study of the leather cutting problem.