Panel Layout Software

Hi,

Speaking of Drawings.... nice segue huh :-)

I suddenly have a need for finding efficient layup
of rectangular flat parts on a sheet of stock. Like
cutting pieces out of a sheet of plywood or flame (plasma)
cutting pieces from standard sized plate metal. I am aware that
there are many commercial packages available but I am
doing this as a hobby and would not want to spend much(any)
money on it. It seems to me that this problem is more or less
universal and would have been solved many times before. I have
spent hours searching the web and have turned up nothing (for
free).
Does anyone know of a piece of software that will allow
me to enter(draw) the sheet size, and the size of several rectangular
shapes and have it give me an efficient layout. It would be nice if
it would take into consideration cutter width etc. I have AutoCad 14
and AutoCad 2000 available(friends). I also wouldn't mind doing some C
or C++ programming to get the results that I need, if someone is aware
of software from an educational institution, hobbyist or student.
My particular problem is highly constrained in that it is only
2D and deals strictly with rectangular parts but I wouldn't mind
acquiring a more sophisticated solution.
Currently I just draw the pieces in IntelliCad and then make
copies and move them around. This actually works OK but is time
consuming and I am never convinced that I have come up with the 'best'
solution.

Any source code, software, AutoCAD add-ons or suggestions would
be appreciated.

Thanks,

don kelley
dkelley@...

-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Wright [mailto:Ian@...]
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2001 4:33 AM
To: CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Autosketch


Hi,

I've had to use Autosketch on-and-off since 1980. It started out pretty
useless and hasn't progressed very far from there! There are a number of
free programs about which are much better. Intellicad, which you mention, is
a pretty near clone of Autocad14 and is light years ahead of Autosketch.

Ian