Excel to choose all possible combinations

Originally Posted by MrShorty

It sounds like a pretty classic "knapsack problem" (Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem ). Here are a couple of excel specific tutorials for solving the knapsack problem:
http://blog.excelmasterseries.com/20...el-solver.html
http://www.excel-easy.com/vba/exampl...k-problem.html

I would suggest you start there. If you have specific questions about implementing any of the steps in those tutorials, post those questions and we will do our best to help.

Thanks for your answer, it gives me a good place to start.

Reading through them, it seems to include 'value' which I don't need. Instead I need all the possible combinations of weight instead, is this possible?

and it gives all the possible combinations of the other products that could go with it that keeps it under a certain weight.

Is your problem really that simple? Normally when loading pallets not only wight is a constraint but also size of product. I.e. a box with a given size may be stacked in a 3 dimensional way to fill the pallet to a specified height / length.

If so there are a number of programs that can solve problem like this

http://www.packer3d.com/online/pal-by-box

Alf

As you only seem to be interested in weight combination to add up to a given value perhaps this thread could be of interest

https://www.excelforum.com/excel-gen...-up-to-it.html

See post # 5

Alf

Originally Posted by Alf

Is your problem really that simple? Normally when loading pallets not only wight is a constraint but also size of product. I.e. a box with a given size may be stacked in a 3 dimensional way to fill the pallet to a specified height / length.

If so there are a number of programs that can solve problem like this

http://www.packer3d.com/online/pal-by-box

Alf

No, the pallets are already stacked. I'm interested in what combinations we can put pallets into a lorry based on their weight while not going over 28.

Originally Posted by Alf

As you only seem to be interested in weight combination to add up to a given value perhaps this thread could be of interest

https://www.excelforum.com/excel-gen...-up-to-it.html

See post # 5

Alf

Ok thanks, I'll have a look now.

Originally Posted by Alf

As you only seem to be interested in weight combination to add up to a given value perhaps this thread could be of interest

https://www.excelforum.com/excel-gen...-up-to-it.html

See post # 5

Alf

Ok so I can figure some of it out. That document is useful but there's two things it doesn't do:

1. I need a maximum of 26 items (pallets). Most likely 25.
2. I don't need it to exactly add up to 28 it just needs to be less than 28.