Optimizing Allocation of Two Dimensional Irregular Shapes using an Agent Based Approach

Packing problems arise in a wide variety of application areas. The basic problem is that of determining an efficient arrangement of different objects in a region without any overlap and with minimal wasted gap between shapes. This paper presents a novel population based approach for optimizing arrangement of irregular shapes. In this approach, each shape is coded as an agent and the agents' reproductions and grouping policies results in arrangements of the objects in positions with least wasted area between them. The approach is implemented in an application for cutting sheets and test results on several problems from literature are presented. Keywords—Optimization, Bin Packing, Agent Based Systems.

[1]  Herbert Freeman,et al.  Determining the minimum-area encasing rectangle for an arbitrary closed curve , 1975, CACM.

[2]  Ping Chen,et al.  Two-dimensional packing for irregular shaped objects , 2003, 36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2003. Proceedings of the.

[3]  Graham Kendall,et al.  Applying Simulated Annealing and the No Fit Polygon to the Nesting Problem , 2000 .

[4]  Scott E. Grasman,et al.  An Object-based Evolutionary Algorithm for Nesting Problems , 2007 .

[5]  H. Gea,et al.  Two-dimensional packing problems using genetic algorithms , 2005, Engineering with Computers.

[6]  D. F. Chairman-Wong.  Proceedings of the 1999 international symposium on Physical design , 1999 .

[7]  Mark J. Jakiela,et al.  Solving Pattern Nesting Problems with Genetic Algorithms Employing Task Decomposition and Contact Detection , 1995, Evolutionary Computation.

[8]  Y. Kajitani,et al.  The multi-BSG: stochastic approach to an optimum packing of convex-rectilinear blocks , 1998, 1998 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design. Digest of Technical Papers (IEEE Cat. No.98CB36287).

[9]  Antonio Albano,et al.  NESTING TWO-DIMENSIONAL SHAPES IN RECTANGULAR MODULES , 1976 .

[10]  Hiroshi Murata,et al.  Arbitrary convex and concave rectilinear block packing using sequence-pair , 1999, ISPD '99.

[11]  Jerry L. Sanders,et al.  A nesting algorithm for irregular parts and factors affecting trim losses , 1987 .

[12]  Jacek Blazewicz,et al.  Using a tabu search approach for solving the two-dimensional irregular cutting problem , 1993, Ann. Oper. Res..

[13]  Dov Dori,et al.  Efficient nesting of congruent convex figures , 1984, CACM.

[14]  Eva Hopper,et al.  Two-dimensional Packing utilising Evolutionary Algorithms and other Meta-Heuristic Methods , 2002 .

[15]  L. Fogel,et al.  European Journal Ofoperational Research on Genetic Algorithms for the Packing of Polygons , 1996 .

[16]  Antonio Albano,et al.  Optimal Allocation of Two-Dimensional Irregular Shapes Using Heuristic Search Methods , 1980, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.