>>Interesting. I'd suggest leaving the garphical part out fo now. Once the basic functionality is up it shouldn't be much difficult either(that's what I say to myself always ;) <g>)
>>
>>You say the containers could be of 20ft, 40ft etc. The 1st imput could be the type/size of container and then calculate the AREA of the container.
>>
>>Now we come down to goods. If the goods carton are all of one size the job shouldn't be much difficult, though if they are of different sizes we need to get those sizes say in an array and a column of the array could also store the AREA(lxbxh) of the goods carton.
>>
>>Doing some math here can tell us how many goods cartons can fit in, though it would be criptic for goods cartons of multiple sizes wherein you will have to feed in which ones to give more priority or percentage or maximum numbers etc.
>>
>>Good Luck,
>>Kamal
>>
>>>I have a very complex prob..
>>>
>>>Our co. being a export firm is having a requirement, the details of which are as follows :-
>>>
>>>we are shipping goods in various carton sizes which goes into containers of 40ft, 20 ft etc.
>>>
>>>We try to fill as much goods as possible in a container..(saving each inch of space)
>>>
>>>Our goods carton size varies from order to order.. what we want is the user should give input of carton sizes i.e.
>>>
>>>Length X Breadth X Width & in which container (i.e. 40 or 20) wants to put those goods..
>>>
>>>Program should show a graphical presentation, how goods will be loaded, i.e. how can rows, in which direction horizontal or vertical....so that we can utilize maximum space...
>>>

>>>This Prob. is so complex that I don't know from where to start it...
>>>
>>>Any Help/ideas/suggestions are welcome...
>
>Thanks Kamal, Actually simple maths calculations what we are doing is
>
>suppose LXBXW are 20X34X29
>
>so 0.20X0.34x0.29=0.01972
>
>This is per carton CBM now multiply it with no. of cartons say 1200, so
>
>1200X0.01972=23.664
>
>So quantity can fit in say 20ft.
>
>But physically when labours start to stuff the goods situation is alltogether different.. if a carton size is odd, it wastes a lot of space..
>
>Its not possible to manually stuff the goods and test this out, have to set some formula where it can check no. of combinations and comes up with the best result...

I had been thinking about this and your point is quite correct. We have to think graphically here. OK.

Assumptions : cartons are either square or rectangular in shape.
1st condition to consider would be
A rectungular catron can be placed on either of the three planes (Rectangle would have 6 planes but 2 would be common for each)

2nd Condition is
When a carton is placed on any of its plane it could have 2 positions. Think of putting a carton in a corner.

For now, these are the only conditions in which a carton could be placed. Now we develop the algo for starting the placement where we need to try out all possible combinations for placement.

Kamal