3D Irregular Packing in an Optimized Cuboid Container

Abstract

A packing problem for irregular 3D objects approximated by polyhedra is presented. The objects have to be packed into a cuboid of minimum height under continuous rotations, translations and minimum allowable distances between objects. The problem has various applications and arises, e.g. in additive manufacturing. Containment, distance and non-overlapping constraints are described using the phi-function technique. The irregular packing problem is formulated in the form of nonlinear programming problem. A solution algorithm is proposed based on a fast starting point algorithm and efficient local optimization procedure.