This smells very much like an NP-complete problem. I'd be very surprised if the problem isn't known in the literature. I am although a bit confused by the 'least amount of wasted space' requirement. If you have 4 4x6 and 6 2x9 rectangles, it's going to take 252 area. If your big rectangle has area N, and the smaller rectangles fit, you will be wasting N - 252 space. No matter how you fit them.

Abigail


In reply to Re: help with nesting by Abigail-II
in thread help with nesting by stu96art

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