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Description
This application required material utilization optimization as well as automation of the manufacturing process. There are several "off the shelf" programs that offer this ability. However, all of these programs are optimized to work with standard saws. The unique nature of this client's business made the patterns and saw programs, created by these "off the shelf" products, unusable and unable to drive their manufacturing process. Knight Software wrote the optimizer editor and post processor to meet those needs. Rather than reinvent the wheel, we used an "off the shelf" optimization product as a first step for choosing stock and creating initial patterns. Saw Program imports this data and uses optimization algorithms to calculate the best cost for manufacturing each pattern. An efficient user interface allows the user to edit patterns and create new patterns while giving instant feedback of the manufacturing steps and costs as a result of each modification. The user interface provides every speed benefit possible including: Multi-Piece Drag and Drop, with automatic target selection (drops to closest available destination). Automatic validation (will not allow invalid modifications). Keyboard shortcuts for quick traversal of patterns. Work modes for efficiently setting up the user interface to perform common tasks. Large Numeric Display for quickly evaluating information by simply selecting each piece.