Would it be possible to make it optimize between boxes?

[podme]

I have several boxes of the same size. The contents to be packed are boxes of various dimensions, and I want to find the optimal way to pack as many of these content boxes as possible into as few containing boxes as possible. Is there a way or could the feature be added to make it optimize for several containing boxes please?

[olragon]

No built-in method for that. You can try to reduce boxes by half, test if fit, add a quarter, then test again, ...

[podme]

Sorry I don’t understand. Do you mean reduce the content boxes or container boxes by half?

[olragon]

Sorry, I mean containers.

My ideas come from the divide and conquer technical.
https://catazine.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/divide-and-conquer/

• find out all boxes can be fit in all containers, if not, abort
• find out half of the containers can fit all box, if not, increase containers
• ...

[podme]

That’s interesting, thanks :)

I suspect my issue is a little more complicated and beyond the current capability. I have already a surplus of container boxes, so I'm not worried for example about how many to buy. I'm looking for the optimal way to pack the fixed number of content boxes in the unlimited container boxes. Of course if it optimizes, then as a consequence it will naturally use as few container boxes as possible. Ideally, I am thinking that such an app would be able to handle both varying sized container and content boxes, while optimizing globally (as opposed to on a per box basis in response to the arbitrary sequence we feed it). Rather it should ignore the sequence in which we feed the content boxes in, preferring to generate its own sequence. And if a quantum computer is requred for this, I would not be surprised, so no pressure! ;)