CuboNester – arranging cuboids for cutting or packing

The CuboNester software optimizes the arrangement of cuboid or nearly cuboid parts such as material blocks, boxes, or boards in three dimensions. The algorithm can combine a variety of different parts in one arrangement.

The software is available in two variants: 

• CuboNester-C is designed for cutting blocks of material. It can be used for metal, marble, graphite, and foam, among others.
• CuboNester-P optimizes packing, for example of furniture elements into packages.

Other possible applications of CuboNester include packing boxes into shipping cartons for mixed orders in online retail, or pallet and container loading.

CuboNester is still a young product that is tailor-made to meet two customers' needs, for metal cutting and for furniture packaging, respectively. Other customers can license the product and use it with just a few adjustments for these applications. However, we are also looking forward to further developing CuboNester, learning from customers in other areas about the specifics relevant there, and expanding the implementation for these needs.

CuboNester is distributed as a pure nesting engine and can easily be integrated into other applications, such as plant control systems, MES, or ERP systems. For this purpose, CuboNester has an XML interface that can be used via standard input/output, files, or network service. The software runs on all current Microsoft Windows operating systems.

CuboNester addresses two groups of customers,

• software solution providers who want to integrate an optimization into their application and
• companies that are willing to program a corresponding connection to their IT systems or ask their IT service provider to do so.

To give you an impression of the performance of our software before you integrate it into your systems, we offer a demo GUI. This simple GUI is not suitable for daily productive use.

Based on the latest research results, Fraunhofer SCAI constantly improves and enhances CuboNester. CuboNester benefits from the expertise of the institute in optimization.