ASSEMBLY PACKING IN 3D PRINTING

1 . A method comprising:

receiving component information representing components to be printed by a three dimensional (3D) printer;

generating assembly arrangements representing a functional assembly of the components within a bounding box; and

determining a 3D nesting arrangement using the generated assembly arrangements.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the 3D nesting arrangement comprises generating a plurality of nesting arrangements using the generated assembly arrangements and comparing a nest quality of the nesting arrangements.

3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein pseudo-random generation is used to generate different assembly arrangements.

4 . The method of claim 3 , wherein a characteristic of a component is used to prioritise at least one component and to move the at least one component to modify a footprint of the assembly arrangement.

5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein a bounding box is used to determine whether the generated assembly arrangements are to be used to determine the optimised 3D nesting arrangement.

6 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising generating a 3D nesting arrangement based on at least one of the generated assembly arrangements or a combination of the generated assembly arrangements.

7 . The method of claim 6 , wherein determining the 3D nesting arrangement comprises substituting an assembly arrangement of a previously generated nesting arrangement with a different assembly arrangement to generate a further nesting arrangement.

8 . The method of claim 1 wherein the 3D nesting arrangement is used to generate printer data and to 3D print an assembly of components.

9 . An apparatus comprising: a controller to: access information on assembly components to be printed by a three dimensional (3D) printer; and determine, based on the information, different assembly arrangements to optimise three dimensional (3D) nesting.

10 . The apparatus of claim 9 , wherein the controller generates different dispositions of assembly components to modify a footprint of the assembly arrangements.

11 . The apparatus of claim 10 , wherein the different dispositions are generated based on information concerning component relationships and/or component movability.

12 . The apparatus of claim 10 , wherein the controller is to generate different dispositions based on assembly component volumes.

13 . The apparatus of claim 9 or 10 , wherein the controller is to generate different assembly arrangements by generating different dispositions for components having a largest sweeping volume.

14 . The apparatus of claim 9 , wherein the controller is to validate an assembly arrangement if the footprint of the assembly arrangement does not exceed parameters that define a bounding box.

15 . A computer-readable medium comprising instructions that, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to: obtain component information of a printable assembly and determine, based on the information, different dispositions of the assembled components to be used in three dimensional (3D) nesting.