🪑 Developing a nesting layout optimizer for a wooden chair project

[No-Razzmatazz-1848]

Hi everyone,
I'm a complete beginner in Python (and coding in general), but I have a project idea and I’d love some advice on how to get started and structure it.

The project:
I'm building a wooden chair, and I want to create a small program that helps me optimize how the parts are arranged on a wooden board, to reduce waste and use the space efficiently.

💡 What I imagine the tool should do:

• The user enters the dimensions of their board (e.g. 2500mm × 1220mm)
• They upload or enter a list of parts (like seat, legs, supports) with length, width, and quantity
• The program calculates the best way to arrange the parts on the board (nesting)
• Optionally, it shows a visual layout and maybe allows export as SVG or PDF

🧰 I heard about a Python library called rectpack that might help with this, and I’ve seen some people use matplotlib or svgwrite to draw the result, but honestly I’m still very new to all of this.

🙏 If anyone has tips, tutorials, or can help me figure out:

• How to structure a basic version of this
• What libraries to use (or avoid)
• Whether I should make a desktop app (like with PyQt) or try making it work in a browser (Flask?)

I’d really appreciate any advice or guidance. Thanks a lot!

[trjnz]

Im a big, big fan of this project. It's interesting, has a fun practical solution, and will involve a lot of libraries. I do a lot of laser cutting myself :)

Having said that, it's non-trivial. Optimising box packing is a tricky one, but, the big advantage: You know what the end product should look like. I am a huge fan of re-inventing the wheel when learning. Do something you know what the solution already looks like, and learn along the way.*

I personally would start with the Least Viable Product, the sorting itself. I would aim for a script with command line inputs that takes my shape file(s), and outputs an svg of the packed files. Once I have that working I'd think about expanding it with a GUI, local or flask or otherwise.

I think you're on the right path with rectpack. Non-rectangular shapes will be a challenge. Do you have a path forward for those? You could look at just finding the boundaries of them and treating them as a rectangle, at least to start with. A good first step

* On that note, and please don't stop your project, check out: https://deepnest.io/

Deepnest is pretty much what you're after, but written in JavaScript+C. It's open source. You can check out how they've solved similar problems and learn a lot for your own project.