Wasting less material with some advanced mathematics

Todays request is a big one, but might really help set you apart from the competition.

I cut, just like everyone, various complex shapes in wood. My biggest problem in cutting wood are the natural knots and blemishes you find in all types of wood. So I spend most of my time plotting my shapes/toolpaths around these knots/problems, rotating them to fit, and trying to squish as many “shapes” into the good areas of the wood as possible.

What I would like is to be able to plot the “cuttable” areas of my wood, and then have Carbide automatically fill this space with as many “shapes/toolpaths” possible, rotating etc to fit in as many as possible.

I’m sure I’m wasting a lot of wood simply because it takes too much time to fit all my toolpaths together in a jigsaw like pattern to optimise my cutting area. Does this sound feasible?

I hope all that made some sense! Thanks!

There was a post earlier today that has a similar theme: Carbide creat pro

This would be known as a special application of nesting.

If I have a board thus which I need to use, I just take a photo of it, import that into Carbide Create as a background/reference image, and place things on it as desired — is this what you’re already doing?

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Yes that is what I’m already doing, and that is helpful. I think though the opacity is still too light even when set to 1 (I would have thought 1 would be no opacity at all?), and the scaling is awkward too. It would be good if you could click on the corners of your wood in your photo and have them automatically scale to fit your work area :slight_smile:

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