An effective nesting algorithm has been proposed to allocate the arbitrary shapes on one or several raw sheets by applying the well-known simulated annealing algorithm as the optimization technique. In this approach, both the shapes to be allocated and the raw sheets are represented as the grid-based models. This algorithm can accommodate every possible situations encountered in cutting apparel parts from the raw leather sheets. In other words, the usage of the internal hole of a shape for other small shapes, handling of the irregular boundaries and the interior defects of the raw sheets, and the simultaneous allocation on more than one raw sheets have been tackled on successfully in this study. Several computational experiments are presented to verify the robustness of the proposed algorithm.