I'd advise anyone involved in the current discussion about cutting simulation software to check out the two following programs:
CutViewer (www.cutviewer.com)
Metacut (www.metacut.com)
Both do approximately what we are discussing doing. I really like Metacut but it's 600-2500 dollars. I've got Surfcam but their entry level solid block visualization is kinda slow and not very feature rich. Cutview is like Metacut light and it crashes a lot for me. It's 400 dollars though so it's cheaper than Metacut.
It's always good to see what's out there and what other people did before you try it yourself. It looks like metacut uses the grid idea that I had. You can see on the verification screen a little grid icon w/ a size next to it. It's a lot larger than what I was talking about using. I'm not sure what exactly they are doing. Metacut is really, really fast though and allows for free rotating and zooming. I really like that. All in all, I would recommend Metacut to anyone who has the 600 bucks to spend and wants a very nice visualization program. Still, I want to make my own. ;-)
Another thing to consider. If we really do get this off of the ground we aren't going to make friends out of the people at CutViewer and Metacut. Cross yourselves off of their Christmas card list. I can't imagine the current guys appreciating a freeware clone. Not that we'll probably ever code up all of the features that they have.