Abstract: Pieces (21) are cut out from a lay-up (20) built up from plies of superposed flexible sheets of material, and the lay-up is then packaged in full inside a covering (70) without separating the cutout pieces from the scrap. The lay-up can thus be transferred from a cutting installation to a workshop for assembling the pieces, and information relating to the layout or layouts of the cutout pieces can be transmitted therewith.

Abstract: An ideal layout for the pieces on the patterned fabric is determined and stored. Monitoring is performed on the real fabric (20) by detecting any offset between the real pitch of the pattern (M) on the fabric as spread out and the ideal pitch used to determine the layout. The layout is modified as a function of the detected offset so that the layout matches the real pitch on the spread-out fabric before the fabric is cut. Monitoring the fabric is performed by taking images of portions of the spread-out fabric by means of a camera (60), and by verifying the images as taken to see whether the locations corresponding to the stored information occupy the desired positions relative to the real pattern on the spread-out fabric.