On Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:10:57 GMT, Grant Erwin
wrote:

Marv, I have an enhancement suggestion. As we all know, there is no such
thing as a zero-kerf cut. It is possible to manually add .025" or .035" or .050"
or .125" or .3125" to each part length, but it's painful. It would be so dang
handy to be able to just input the kerf in the data file ..

I'm very pleased with CUTS and plan to use it a lot!

Grant

Grant,

The reason CUTS doesn't provide for a kerf is that I wrote it to test
my concept for doing the problem and didn't want to deal with the
complication of the kerf.

Do me a favor. Set your problem up with REMNANT. It includes the
ability to specify a kerf width in its data file. It's intended to
accept unequal length remnants as input but it should work with a
collection of equal length pieces of stock as in your case.

Assuming it works, compare the answer you get with what you got with
CUTS. They should be similar. And it should run more quickly because
REMNANT uses the greedy algorithm while CUTS uses exhaustive search.

I'd do this check myself except I want to do it with your specific
data. None of these algorithms are perfect and results can vary
depending on the specific problem.

If what I suggest is too much work for you, email me your problem data
and I'll do the experiment on my own. My email is: mklotz at alum dot
mit dot edu.