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.
The repo mixed variants such as center/centre and color/colour, so a
name could be spelled either way and searches missed half the hits.
Standardize on the US spelling, matching .NET's own APIs (Color, Center).
Wire values owned by other systems keep their spelling: the material
ledger's "Cancelled" hold status and GitHub's "cancelled" job status.
No behavior change beyond the spelling of a few status messages.
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>
Circles packs every part as its minimum enclosing circle at centers tangent
to two of the work-area walls, placed discs and clamp keep-outs, bottom-left
and left-bottom, with hexagonal and square lattice seeds. It bids only when
every part fills at least 0.8 of its enclosing circle and otherwise returns
everything unplaced at once. Default runs it as a third candidate.
Rectangles' sheet-by-sheet stock loop moves to NestingEngines/SheetByStock
(Rectangles output unchanged) and Default's candidate scoring and commit
forwarding become shared helpers. Circles also runs the whole job preferring
each offered stock and keeps the best result. Contract tests take shapes an
engine can override.
Synthetic round jobs, salvage-credited: Circles wins or ties all six with
valid layouts; Default cost falls about 4% versus Irregular alone.
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
