A Novel Approach to Optimal Packing Using Composite Object Geometry

Abstract

Efficient packing in a limited space has been a topic of interest in several disciplines such as engineering, management, computer science, and operations research. In these areas, engineers and scientists have been working with various algorithms to reduce the computational complexity, develop complex part overlap detection, and reduce overall computational time over the last 40 years. How to optimally place patterns over a given space is a complex task because the problem is highly non-linear. Current research addresses both of these to some extent. A simple approach on modeling complex 2 dimensional objects as composites combining regular geometries is given. This greatly simplifies the overlap detection for the packing of these objects within a minimum area. Furthermore, since no overlap needs to be calculated between the shapes within a composite area, overall number of overlap detection is also reduced. Several 2 dimensional example problems are used to demonstrate the approach.