Applying Ant Algorithms and the No Fit Polygon to the Nesting Problem

In previous work solutions for the nesting problem are produced using the no fit polygon (NFP), a new evaluation method and three evolutionary algorithms (simulated annealing (SA), tabu search (TS) and genetic algorithms (GA)). Tabu search has been shown to produce the best quality solutions for two problems. In this paper this work is developed. A relatively new type of search algorithm (ant algorithm) is developed and the results from this algorithm are compared against SA, TS and GA We discuss the ideas behind ant algorithms and describe how they have been implemented with regards to the nesting problem. The evaluation method used is described, as is the NFP. Computational results are given.

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