Question. For a run with about 8 sizes (a few hundred of each) your optimiser produced a result with 5 patterns - when I tried this myself I found I could do it in 1 pattern. Surely the optimiser is badly wrong?
Answer. Whilst it is true that for relatively simple lists a manual planner can sometimes beat an optimiser this is much less often the case than you might think. Look carefully at the overall cost of the two jobs - often the many pattern solution is cheaper! and this is why the optimiser has chosen it. Remember that for saws that are automatically programmed there are no setup costs for the patterns so the number of patterns is less important. To achieve a one pattern solution you often have to include head cuts and recuts and these increase cutting time drastically whereas the many pattern result usually contains much simpler checkerboard patterns.
