About 6 months ago members of the Guild were asked to help a company minimise the amount of wastage when cutting out components. We set about looking at various packages that claim to to the job but the best solution we managed to come up with was a free cutting optimisation package going by the name of Optimik. This package, although free is far from limiting as it offers a wide range of nice, useful features including the utilisation of offcuts from previous orders.
The aim of the OPTIMIK is to shorten the time needed for designing of the cut-off blueprints by maximum, in comparison with the “handmade” designs while keeping concurrent increase in productivity. By the production of these blueprints the program arranges the rectangle plates into the minimum number of plates of material. It shows you the amount of the left-overs in form of utilizable cut-offs and therefore it saves your time and money.
I did however find it difficult to get to grips with at first as the help documentation is rather lacking but a couple of hours playing around soon sorts you out. I would definitely bare this one in mind when you next embark on a project which involves you cutting many components from a single sheet.
You can download it here.
