abetusk / clipcli Goto Github PK

If the destination is to create a route for cutting (for example, with a laser cutter), the inner polygons have to be cut before the outer polygons to ensure the piece doesn't fall through before the inner pieces have been finished. The -T option does this but the schedule of cuts is not optimized at all, causing the polygons that otherwise wouldn't care about ordering, to be rendered in a potentially zig-zag pattern, causing undue travel for the cutting instrument.

One heuristic to alleviate the zig-zag is to give another option for lexigraphical ordering of the polygons. Something like:

• Decide on a representative point, either on the boundary, or on the bounding box of the polygon
• For each polygon that are siblings of each other, render them in lexigraphical ordering (x first, then y on x-position ties, say).

This won't always be the best path but I think this will fix most of the issues with zig-zagging.

Priority: medium
Time estimate: 4