Optimalon’s Online Panel Cutter Tool Got New Post-Processing Module Resulted in Efficiency Improving by 17 Percent
1888 Press Release – Optimalon Software has released a new version of online panel cutting optimization tool that introduced advanced post-processing algorithm. This innovation improves efficiency of the optimization by 17 percent and boosts productivity of any fabrication shops.
The soaring cost of materials and supply chain disruptions have forced many wood and metal working companies to strive for better utilization of their stock while still providing products to their customers. However, finding an optimal way to cut wood, metal or glass panels is no trivial task and it usually requires hours of manual labor with a pencil and drawing paper.
Optimalon Software has been providing software solutions to facilitate the process of finding the perfect cutting plan. One such solution is the online panel cutting optimization service accessible to hobbyists, handymen, workshops and industrial plants.
Denis Smirnov, marketing director of Optimalon Software explains: “Since we first released our online service, we have been constantly adding more features and improving the core calculation engine, CutGLib, to produce better cutting plans. The recent release includes a post-processing algorithm that combines several sparse cutting lists into one, which produces the least waste possible. It works exceptionally well for borderline cases where squeezing two or even one part into existing cutting layouts would prevent a whole stock to be used unnecessary.”
In order to minimize the total waste produced from several projects, the online cutter supports the usage of leftover material by designating some stock as “waste” during a project setup. It forces the algorithm to use leftovers, even if they produce a non-optimal cut list.
Denis Smirnov continues: “We provide two-tier accounts: free and premium. Our premium users pay $9.99 monthly or $79.99 annually to get import/export parts and stock from Excel spreadsheet files, and exports calculation results to Excel, PDF, or DXF files. We recently added the ability to export the results into a pattern exchange format (PTX). That is a standard format for describing parts, boards, patterns and cutting information that can be used directly for some CNC saw machines including HOMAG, SCM and others.”
The online panel cutter supports both metric (millimeters, centimeters and meters) and imperial (feet, inches) units. Users can specify inches in fractions or decimals in a convenient and simple way.
Users can designate any parts that need to be cut from the stocks as “non-rotatable” during the calculation to preserve the grain orientation. In a labour-intensive and fast-paced cabinetmaking environment, reduction of cutting operations and time is highly important. The online cutter has an option to minimize the number of cutting layouts. Hence, several stocks can be place in a pile and cut at once.
The web-applicaiton has been providing layout minimization functionality that is very important for wood cutting, allowing the operator to load several panels into the cutting machine and process them at once. Recently introduced option “Maximum Layout Size” allows defining the maximum number of panels allowed in one layout. This function is critical when the cutting machine’s hardware limits the number of panels it can process simultaneously.
The calculation result summary gives the used and waste areas, utilization rate and number of cut parts and un-cut parts (if any). For each cutting layout there is graphical web page with navigation and zoom-in and zoom-out functionalities.
The online panel cutter is free to anyone and accessible from Optimalon’s website at the following link: https://www.optimalon.com/online_cut_optimizer.htm
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