Equal-cost plans break ties by the largest edge offcut, from any of the
four edges. A caller that wants the leftover off one way, such as a
shop that keeps only end drops, or a benchmark scoring the used sheet
height, had no way to say so. On the converted Nestbolt jobs the
extended Irregular search then found plans whose larger offcut is a
strip down the side, which Nestbolt scores as worse: b-blaz1-strip
3.601 -> 3.867, b-shirts-strip 2.674 -> 2.995.
NestJobOptions.OffcutCut (a CutOffAxis, default null) counts only the
strips one cut along that axis frees, for salvage credit and the
compactness tie-break alike: Horizontal the full-width bottom and top
strips, Vertical the full-length sides. PlateRemnant.LargestOffcut takes
the axis; NestJobCost, the time limit and clamp-removal recovery pass
it on. Unset, nothing changes.
Benchmark manifests accept "offcutCut": "horizontal" or "vertical".
With horizontal, one CPU, 20 s limit, Default:
b-blaz1-strip 3.934 -> 3.333
b-shirts-strip 2.995 -> 2.610
m-box-deep 1.918 -> 1.276 (Nestbolt 1.251)
Manifests accept only the words horizontal or vertical (any case); a
list such as "horizontal,vertical" is rejected. PlateRemnant rejects an
undefined axis. Fixed strategies keep their own no-salvage tie-break
and ignore the option; desktop, Console and MCP do not offer it yet.
Mutation reds: 14/14 (offcut-mutations.py).
Under a time limit, Irregular often finished in about a second and left
the rest unused: on the converted Nestbolt b-jakobs1 job it used five
sheets where four fit.
NestJobOptions.SearchUntilCancelled asks an engine to keep searching
after its normal search until the token is cancelled.
DeadlineNestingEngine sets it. Irregular then re-runs its six variants
with seeded per-type weights on its placement rule (seeds 1, 2, 3, ...,
each weight within e^+-0.4), reports each plan that beats its best,
then re-plans that plan's tail and reports any gain. It skips this when
the token cannot be cancelled, nobody listens for progress, nothing is
placeable, or the job has one part type, so unlimited solves are
unchanged.
Default now runs Irregular last (Rectangles, Circles, Irregular) so
Circles still runs, and chooses only after every candidate has run, in
tie-break order, so the run order never changes the choice. Unlimited
choices match the old run order {Rectangles, Irregular, Circles} except
when three candidates are near-tied within the 1e-9 comparison
tolerance without being transitively ordered (only on all-round jobs,
where Circles bids).
b-jakobs1 on one CPU, 10 s limit: 5 sheets (4.500) -> 4 (3.751).
DeadlineNestingEngine wraps any engine with a wall-clock limit (any positive time up to
the cancellation timer's ~49.7 days). An engine that finishes in time
keeps its result, as does a result it returns after the limit. When the
limit cancels it, the best whole-job plan it reported (PlanImproved,
ranked like Default ranks candidates, a tie going to the later plan) is
returned if it passes the layout check; with none the solve fails with
TimeoutException. The caller's own cancellation is never turned into a
result. Engine plate commits are dropped and the returned result's
commits reported once it is known; plans are forwarded only when they
beat every plan shown so far.
Default now runs Rectangles, then Irregular, then Circles, so a search
stopped early already holds a valid plan. Ties still break by candidate
order (Irregular, Rectangles, Circles), so for these three the choice is
unchanged, and when every candidate throws, the first in that order is
still the one rethrown. A test seam takes a run order. Desktop, Console
and MCP do not apply a limit yet; Console can solve a job twice (cutout
trial and plain), which needs one shared deadline.
Mutations killed (10/10): no fallback at the limit, invalid plan
accepted, caller cancellation becomes a result, engine commits
forwarded, a worse later plan replaces the best, a tie keeps the earlier
plan, no upper limit bound, failure rethrown in run order, built-in run
order unchanged, run order ignored.
Without salvage credit (desktop Auto Nest on a single plate size) every
complete one-sheet layout costs the same, so engines kept whichever layout
came first. N26-23S nested 27.86" long when turning two parts fits it in
21.3".
NestJobCost.CompactnessOffcut measures the largest full-width/full-length
edge offcut as salvage does, whatever the salvage rate. Default and Circles
(CandidateScore), Rectangles and Circles sheet choice (SheetByStock) and
Irregular sheet and plan ranking use it only after cost, so no cost changes.
Sheet-level keys round to 1e-6 to keep ties platform-independent.
Rectangles layout digests are re-captured: each changed fixture keeps its
sheets, parts and cost and leaves a larger offcut.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Desktop Auto Nest's "Best plan so far" strip now fills in for every built-in
whole-job engine except FlatBar, not only Irregular.
- Rectangles makes one sheet-by-sheet run, so it reports the finished job as
its one plan, then replays its plate commits (token checked as before).
- Circles reports when a stock-preference run or a tail re-plan beats its
best result so far.
- Default scores each candidate plan as it ranks results (valid, fewest
unplaced, lowest cost, candidate order) and reports it only when it beats
every plan already shown, so a later candidate never shows a worse plan.
The chosen result is always the last plan reported.
- Shared ReportPlan/SameLayout helpers on CandidateProgress; Irregular uses
them too. Reporting never changes the search.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Default is the engine every front end uses when none is named. It now runs
Irregular, then Rectangles, checks both layouts with NestLayoutCheck and keeps
the best: valid first, then fewest unplaced parts, then lowest salvage-credited
cost; ties keep Irregular. A candidate that throws or returns nothing is
skipped, cancellation stops the search, and only the chosen layout's plate
commits are reported. Neither engine wins every job in the lane benchmarks,
and Rectangles adds little time while also covering Irregular's invalid
layouts.
The registry lists Default first and no longer maps the name to Fill; fill
strategy callers still read Default as Fill. A future circle/ring engine joins
as another candidate.
aj
