Optimize Cutting Material list

**Suraj3825** · 08-23-2013, 01:51 PM

Hello
Im own a small scale industry where I manufacture aluminium windows. My aluminium raw material arrives with each piece being 3660 millimetres.
In these I will cut them to the sizes for the windows I require, which varies very randomly from 200 mm to 2400 mm. But the problem is if we do not optimize it properly, we will me wasting a lot of aluminium which will prove very costly.
So I need a calculation system where if I just enter the sizes I require in a list like this,

660
520
482
1220
548
and so on....

It should automatically arrange it in such an order so that if I cut in that order I will be wasting very less material.

I am well versed with excel and VBA, but I am not able to figure out how to go ahead to create this macro.. Any help will be greatly appreciated :D
Thank You

**JBeaucaire** · 08-23-2013, 02:00 PM

This is not a trivial inquiry. If you Google 'Excel Cut Length Optimization' you will see what I mean. As this represents a fiscal savings to your company, you may want to invest a few $ in one of the many addins available. I can't recommend any, but many are "try before you buy".

Here's one that appears free: http://www.supershareware.com/downlo...ar-cutter.html

**Kenneth Hobson** · 08-23-2013, 02:14 PM

You also need to account for the waste due to cut width. The computation would take the total number for optimizing, and then subtract the width of cut - (total pieces -2).

It also depends on optimizing for one stock piece or total stock pieces.

For the simple case of 1 stock piece, we would need to know the maximum number of pieces to cut. As Jerry said, there are many things to consider.