An enumeration scheme to generate constrained exact checkerboard patterns

Checkerboard patterns belong to a special class of 2-stage guillotine patterns that require less machine time to be cut. In this paper we propose an enumerative algorithm to generate exact constrained checkerboard patterns. At each node of the enumeration tree a constructive procedure is used to generate a feasible pattern. In addition, an upper bound on the objective function value is calculated to decide whether further branching from the node is worth. The algorithm was implemented and computational tests were performed. The test results indicate that the proposed scheme outperforms previous methods of the literature in terms of execution times.