CODEWITHSUNDEEP
algorithmgeometryrectanglesminimization
Charles Tang
Charles Tang

Reputation: 187

Minimum area calculation algorithm (Place tiles on edge only)

I have different dimension of small rectangles (1cm x 2xm, 2cmx3cm, 4cm*6cm etc). The number of different type rectangles may vary depending on case. Each type of different rectangles may have different number of counts.

I need to create a big rectangle with all these small rectangles which these small rectangles can only be placed on the edges. no rotations. The final outer rectangle should ideally be smiliar to a square shape. X ~Y. Not all edges need to be filled up. There can be gaps in between smaller rectangles. Picture Example:
https://i.sstatic.net/GqI5z.png

I am trying to write a code that finds out the minimum possible area that can be formed.

I have an algorithm that loop through all possible placement to find out the minimum area possible. But that takes a long run time as number of different type rectangles and number of rectangles increase. i.e. 2 type of rectangles, each has 100 + rectangles. 8 for loops. That will be ~100^8 iterations

Any ideas on better and faster algorithm to calculate the minimum possible area? code is in python, but any algorithm concept is fine.

    for rectange_1_top_count in (range(0,all_rectangles[1]["count"]+1)):
      for rectange_1_bottom_count in range(0,all_rectangles[1]["count"]-rectange_1_top_count+1):
        for rectange_1_left_count in (range(0,all_rectangles[1]["count"]-rectange_1_top_count-rectange_1_bottom_count+1)):
          for rectange_1_right_count in ([all_rectangles[1]["count"]-rectange_1_top_count-rectange_1_bottom_count-rectange_1_left_count]):
            for rectange_2_top_count in (range(0,all_rectangles[2]["count"]+1)):
              for rectange_2_bottom_count in (range(0,all_rectangles[2]["count"]-rectange_2_top_count+1)):
                for rectange_2_left_count in (range(0,all_rectangles[2]["count"]-rectange_2_bottom_count-rectange_2_top_count+1)):
                  for rectange_2_right_count in [(all_rectangles[2]["count"]-rectange_2_bottom_count-rectange_2_left_count-rectange_2_top_count)]:
                      area=calculate_minimum_area()
                      if area< minimum_area:
                        minimum_area=area

Upvotes: 6

Views: 251

Answers (1)

lex82
lex82

Reputation: 11317

This looks like an NP-hard problem, so there exists no simple and efficient algorithm. It doesn't mean that there is no good heuristic that you can use, but if you have many small rectangles, you won't find the optimal solution fast.

Why is it NP-hard? Let's assume all your rectangles have height 1 and you have on rectangle of height 2, then it would make sense to look for a solution with total height 2 (basically, you try to form two horizontal lines of height-1 rectangles with the same length). To figure out if such a solution exists, you would have to form two subsets of your small rectangles, both adding up to the same total width. This is called the partition problem and it is NP-complete. Even if there may be gaps and the total widths are not required to be the same, this is still an NP-hard problem. You can reduce the partition problem to your rectangle problem by converting the elements to partition into rectangles of height 1 as outlined above.

I'll wait for the answer to the questions I posted in the comments to your question and then think about it again.

Upvotes: 0

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