Nesting

Nesting brings 2D sheet packing and cutting-layout nodes to the BeeGraphy Editor. Use it to place flat parts onto a sheet or container with minimal waste, whether you need fast rectangular heuristics, genetic optimisation, or true-shape nesting for curved and irregular outlines. The package also includes an overlay node for combining nested results with other geometry in a parametric graph.

Node Groups

Rectangular Nesting

Nodes in this group place rectangles into a rectangular sheet using different strategies.

• Nesting Guillotine Best Fit Naive – rapid guillotine best-fit placement for simple layouts.
• Genetic Nesting Guillotine Best Fit Naive – genetic algorithm variant of the guillotine best-fit placement, usually producing denser results.
• Nesting Row Naive – places items sequentially in horizontal rows; each new part is placed next to the previous one until the row is full, then a new row starts below.
• Nesting MaxRects Best Fit – tracks the largest free rectangles and places each part where it leaves minimal leftover space.
• Nesting BLF Naive – bottom-left-fill greedy placement: each part goes to the lowest possible position, then the leftmost available space.
• Nesting CBLF Naive – corner-bottom-left-fill placement, selecting the lowest possible position and leftmost available corner.
• Nesting Guillotine 3-Stage – cuts the sheet into horizontal strips, then vertical stacks, then parts; optimized for format-cutting machines.

True Shape Nesting

These nodes handle non-rectangular, curved, concave, and holed shapes.

• Nesting Polygon Genetic – true-shape polygon nesting with a genetic algorithm and bitmap collision detection. Supports hole filling and multi-angle rotation.
• Nesting Bitmap Polygon – true-shape nesting via bitmap pixel-mask collision. Handles curved, concave, and holed shapes natively. Supports fast BLF and dense GA packing, per-part rotation, kerf-aware spacing, a hex pre-pass for circle inputs, and QLM post-pass compaction.

Overlay

• Overlay Nested Geometry – overlays one geometry onto another: applies Translation if given, rotates it about the base geometry’s bbox center if Rotation is given, then applies Offset if given, rotated to match. The base geometry meta is copied onto the result. Wire arrays into the ports and use the node’s List Matching options (Shortest List / Longest List / Cross Reference) to control how items pair up.

Examples

Quick rectangular packing

Connect a container rectangle and a list of part rectangles to Nesting Row Naive for a fast row-based layout. If the result is too loose, swap the node for Nesting MaxRects Best Fit to use free-rectangle tracking and reduce wasted space.

True-shape layout with kerf spacing

Feed flat part outlines—including curved or holed shapes—into Nesting Bitmap Polygon. Use BLF for a fast preview, then switch to GA for a denser packing. Enable kerf-aware spacing when cutting with a tool that removes material. Overlay the nested result onto the sheet with Overlay Nested Geometry, adding translation, rotation, or offset as needed.

Production guillotine cutting

For format-cutting machines, route rectangular parts through Nesting Guillotine 3-Stage to generate a layout made of horizontal strips and vertical stacks. For a more optimised placement, replace the naive guillotine path with Genetic Nesting Guillotine Best Fit Naive and compare sheet utilisation.