Effective nesting of Layer Manufacturing fabricated parts using a Genetic Algorithm and a bottom-left ray casting procedure

Two aspects have been identified to be the key elements to the effective utilization of Layer Manufacturing (LM) technologies, that is maximization of the build volume and part orientation. The present work examines the utilization of a Genetic Algorithm in conjunction with effective placement rules as a mean of optimizing the build volume of LM technologies. The optimization is achieved via the dense nesting of parts, to be fabricated, on the LM machine platform. The software tool developed tackles the 2D nesting problem associated with the parts projections on the machine platform. The effectiveness and reliability of the proposed methodology is demonstrated via a case study concerning representative "real-world" parts/objects with quite general free form geometry.