Plotter Optimisation

• Significant improvements have been made regarding the optimisation of machine output.
• Advanced Optimisation options have been added to the Post Processor setup:
  

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• Quick – provides a quicker optimisation by finding a compromise between the running-time of the optimisation algorithm and the quality of the optimisation. Typically this option would be used for outputting a dieboard or a drawing with a large number of entities (typically 7,000 entities or greater).
• Full – provides better optimisation by reducing the amount of rapid travel in the final plot. This option also disables the Optimise output for internal cuts option. A drawing containing a lower number of entities, distributed evenly over a drawing layer could be considered suitable for Full optimisation.
• During internal testing, we found that the Quick Optimisation option gave the following reductions in Rapid Travel  distances for an entire layer (compared to the current output):
  • Layout of Samples 22.71%
  • Dieboard 14.49%
  • Female Stripper 9.44%
  • Routing Stripper 14.19%
• Similarly, we found that the Full Optimisationoption yielded the following reductions (again, for an entire layer, compared to the current output):
  • Layout of Samples 28.96%
  • Dieboard 17.26%
  • Female Stripper 10.49%
  • Routing Stripper 15.05%
• Using the example drawing below, Quick Optimisation yielded a 23% reduction in Rapid Travel distance (compared to the current optimisation), whereas applying Full Optimisation yielded a further 10% reduction:

Current Optimisation                                   Quick Optimisation                                      Full Optimisation

15,555mm of Rapid Travel                            11,846mm of Rapid Travel                            10,570mm of Rapid Travel

• Using the example below, Quick Optimisation yielded a 14% reduction in Rapid Travel distance (compared to the current optimisation), but Full optimisation (which took significantly longer to generate) yielded only a further reduction of 0.7%. An increased number of entities can have a significant effect on the time taken to generate a Fully optimised output.

Current Optimisation                                    Quick Optimisation                                      Full Optimisation

68,042mm of Rapid Travel                            58,523mm of Rapid Travel                            58,106mm of Rapid Travel
                                                                       1 minute output time                                   3min 40 secs output time

• In general, it was found that small reductions in the time taken to output text didn’t justify the extended time taken to run the actual optimisation algorithms.