METHOD OF MAKING A NEST OF CUTS

For making a nest of cuts (N) for cutting blanks out of flat, irregular workpieces (W), the contour (U) and the flaws (F) of the spread workpieces (W) together with a workpiece characteristic are detected by means of a digitizing unit (3), and the corresponding data are read into a computer (5), which on the basis of these data and the data stored in the computer (5) concerning number, shape and quality requirements of the blanks calculates and stores a nest of cuts and utilizes the detected workpiece characteristics of the workpieces (W) as a workpiece code for allocating the nests of cuts (N) to the respective workpieces (W). To provide for an economic nesting with an optimized detection of flaws and consideration of flaws, an interactive nesting is performed for selected partial areas (T) of the workpieces (W) prior to the automatic nesting on the part of the computer, in that images (B) of the blanks (Z) to be nested, which were provided by the computer (5) and can optically be superimposed on the workpieces (W) or an image of the workpieces, are positioned by specific control operations of the nester, preferably by control operations to be recognized by the digitizing unit, and are combined to partial nests (Nt) within the partial areas (T), whereupon the computer (5) calculates residual nests (Nr) for the remaining residual areas (R) of the workpieces (W), combines the residual nests (Nr) with the associated partial nests (Nt) and stores each of these combinations of partial and residual nests as nest of cuts (N) for the individual workpieces (W).