As far as off the shelf solutions, check out MAXLOADPRO for loading trucks. It may be able to be configured to load any rectangular volume, but I haven’t tried that yet. In general 3d bin-packing problems have the added complication that the objects can be rotated into different positions so for any object with a … Read more
I Googled “bin packing code” and this was my first hit: http://codeincomplete.com/posts/2011/5/7/bin_packing/ Here’s a summary: build a binary tree. Each branch in the tree contains a sprite. Each leaf node represents available space. Initially the tree has just the root node, which represents all available space. To add a sprite to the tree, search the … Read more
This is a Bin Packing problem, and it’s NP-hard. For small number of objects and packages, you might be able to simply use the brute force method of trying every possibility. Beyond that, you’ll need to use a heuristic of some sort. The Wikipedia article has some details, along with references to papers you probably … Read more