Circle Packing

[brentma711]

Hello,
I am looking for a way to optimize material usage from cutting circles out of rectangular sheet metal. If there is a LISP for AutoCAD, or even a decent program to do this, it would be of great help.

 

[ornerynorsk]

I've always found taking circles out of a sheet pretty much nest themselves. Stagger them by 1/2 diameter per row, and they stack "pyramid style". You aren't going to get any more compact of a cut pattern than that.