Appeal No. 1997-2986
Application No. 08/260,784
address conflict which the controller is not designed to
arbitrate and which therefore must be resolved by the
operator, possibly by stopping the production run (Spec. at 3,
lines 6-16). Appellant states that his invention solves these
problems by using
a "denester" approach in which, prior to a
production run, all of the nest programs to be
run during the production run are reviewed and
all data relevant to the to be cut pieces are
retrieved . . . . Parts that have the same
dimensions are assigned the same sorting address
so that those same parts are directed to a
particular location at the unloading area of the
sorting and unloading system. [Spec. at 3,
lines 18-27.]
B. The claims
Claims 1, 12, and 21 are the only independent claims on
appeal. Claim 1, which is representative, reads as follows:
1. In a sheet fabricating environment in
which worksheets are cut into finished pieces
with each worksheet being cut in accordance with
at least one program routine, a method of
unloading said finished pieces comprising the
steps of:
identifying for each production run the
program routines in accordance with whose
programmed operations pieces of different
dimensions are to be cut from said worksheets;
retrieving from each of said program
routines data relating to said to be cut pieces;
utilizing said data retrieved from said program
routines to compute optimal locations at at least
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