Hey all! Looking to minimize building cost...

MLCS · 18 Apr 2012, 01:40

Hey everyone,

First post!

I have just finished modelling a piece of furniture (an "armoire" if you must know!) and I was wondering if there was a plug-in that could help me minimize my material costs.

More details:

I am planning on buying large sheets of MDF from which I intend to cut out about 50 smaller pieces of varying sizes. I am looking for a tool/plug-in that would help me minimize the total amount of large sheets I need for my project.

I started doing this manually by trial and error (sketchup puzzle!) and it's quite the frustrating experience. I was thinking of going at it mathematically with a giant system of equations (matrices, LaGrange multipliers, etc), but just the thought gives me goosebumps (and not the good "that's awesome" kind!)...

Does anyone know of such a plug-in? Perhaps something that would accept the dimensions of the large store-available sheets (boards, sheets, rods, etc) and dispose the matching parts in the model in the optimal way?

Thanks in advance!

Roidsan · 18 Apr 2012, 02:53

Seems to me there is part of an old obscure proverb that says "one who asks for advice about their armoire, must show their armoire as thanks for the advice". I think it was referring to armoire models, I think.

Lloyd

brookefox · 18 Apr 2012, 04:25

Search internet (not this site): sketchup plugin minimize waste.

Dave R · 18 Apr 2012, 09:39

I like your proverb, lloyd.

So, Laurence, what you need is to do sheet optimization. Here's an option. Probably the best that I know of. first, you can generate a cut list from your SketchUp model. the Cut List plugin will do sheet layout that's pretty good but it isn't quite there for optimizing. The plugin will generate a file that can be opened in CutList Plus which is designed to do optimization.

the plugin won't arrange parts that might fit nested together such as two L-shaped pieces because it only looks at the bounding boxes of the components. I'm not sure about CutList Plus but I don't think it'll do that either. If you have parts that could be squeezed together like that, you'll need to do that manually.

brookefox · 19 Apr 2012, 04:14

@roidsan said:

Seems to me there is part of an old obscure proverb that says "one who asks for advice about their armoire, must show their armoire as thanks for the advice". I think it was referring to armoire models, I think.

Lloyd

Was that another of those 'thanks in advance?'

'Cutlist' is the first result of the search I suggested, Dave. Where's the props?

Roidsan · 20 Apr 2012, 15:53

Ah yes... It's coming back to me now, the "Thanks in advance" proverb