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aj 3bdefb1d1c docs(engines): document built-in engines, renames and change rules

Adds docs/nesting-engines.md: which engine suits which jobs, the old plug-in
names the registry maps, retired engines, and the rule that an engine change
lands only when it beats that engine's current benchmark result with every
layout valid. README, release and automatic-nesting docs drop the bundled
plug-in wording; AGENTS.md now places built-in engines in
OpenNest.Engine/NestingEngines and keeps only external plug-ins out of the
solution.

2026-09-29 21:19:27 -04:00

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Nesting engines

Whole-job engines implement INestingEngine.Solve(NestJob) and are selected by name through NestingEngineRegistry. Every automatic nesting front end validates engine output the same way; see automatic nesting and validation.

Built-in engines

Engines are named for the jobs they suit, not for how or by whom they were built. Engine code lives in OpenNest.Engine/NestingEngines/<Name>/, its tests in OpenNest.Engine.Tests/NestingEngines/.

Engine	Best for	Method
Rectangles	Plain and near-rectangular plates	Each part packed as the box of its material at its minimum-area rotation, using a maximal-rectangles free list; stock chosen sheet by sheet by salvage-credited look-ahead cost
Irregular	Irregular profiles	No-fit-polygon frontier packing with gap filling, six whole-job strategy variants and a tail re-plan
StockLadder	Caller-supplied stock ladders	Constrained-first fill with equivalent-demand area repacking
Default, Strip, Vertical Remnant, Horizontal Remnant	Single-strategy fills	The fixed placement strategies behind interactive fill

Rectangles places irregular parts validly, but only as their bounding boxes; it never nests into a notch or hole. Box sides account for how the layout check flattens arcs, so round-edged parts stay valid at box contact.

Renamed engines

Earlier releases shipped these as plug-ins under other names. The registry maps the old names so saved desktop selections, scripts and API requests keep working:

Old name	Now
`Opus55NestingEngine`	Irregular
`RectanglesNestingEngine`	Rectangles

Gpt6Astra and Qwen38FlashNext are no longer shipped and have no alias. A saved selection of either falls back to Default with the usual status-bar warning.

Changing an engine

A change lands only when it beats the engine's current result on OpenNest.Benchmark for the jobs that engine targets, with every layout valid. Report cost, validity, unplaced parts and time.
Placement must be deterministic: no clocks, unseeded randomness or environment variables. Budget work by counting it; wall time may stop work only through the cancellation token.
Keep each engine's tests passing, including EngineContractTests<TEngine> (quadrants, overflow, priority, cancellation, stock and plate limits, determinism). Every layout in those tests is checked with NestLayoutCheck, the benchmark's validator.
Engines may share code. Move a helper into shared Engine code when a second engine needs it, rather than copying it.

Plug-ins

External engines still load from an Engines/ folder beside the desktop, console, MCP or benchmark executable. A plug-in implements INestingEngine with a public parameterless constructor and registers under its CLR type name. A plug-in whose name matches a built-in engine, or a renamed engine's old name, is skipped: a leftover OpenNest.Engine.Opus55.dll cannot shadow Irregular. Leftover Gpt6Astra or Qwen38FlashNext DLLs still load as ordinary plug-ins until deleted.

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