When items are cut from acrylic sheets, do those items remain embedded in the sheets for shipping, or are the cut items separated from the sheets, with the base sheet discarded to reduce shipping costs?
It would depend on the design. We might ship delicate or odd-shaped layouts with the pieces still in the scrap material, but in most cases, we remove the parts from the sheet.
When we leave the pieces in the scrap material, we use low-tack tape to keep them from falling out, and we do not require (or add) tabs/breaks to your drawing.