On 1 Nov 2003 at 7:05, Henry Baker wrote:
Wool is notorious for changing its "size" with temperature and humidity,
Indeed, as a raiser-of-sheep, raw wool has that property, too..:o)
I worked on a computer program to virtually "lay out" ("marking") the pattern pieces on the wool to figure out how much cloth a suit would require. Laying out multiple suits at the same time is typically more efficient in terms of fitting the parts together better, but it is more complex to find all the parts after the cutting process and put them together.
This process is a 2-D knapsack problem, and is obviously very difficult.
Isn't it more complicated than just a 2-D knapsack problem? Assuming the metric is "yards per suit", it is hard enough figuring out the optimal answer for, say, "three suits at a time", but if you're trying to actually optimize the assembly-line you have to consider that "four suits at a time" or "five..." or "six..." or "forty..." might result in an overall lower average yards-per-suit, so I'd think that that'd make it harder than just a 2-D knapsack [e.g., to determine that doing 87 suits at a time gives you the *optimal* yards-per-suit] /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <--