Fellow monks,

I'm looking for a solution of an visualisation problem. I want to print the clusters and machines in an computing environment to an overview page.
I have some 8-node clusters (one may grow soon to an 10-node cluster), much more 4-node and 2-node clusters and also standalone machines. We can assume even numbers of machines in the clusters.
I now want to create a printout which not distributes machines all over the printout, but groups the machines together, which are belonging to the same cluster. 
c? ... cluster
m? ... machine
[|-] ... separates clusters

@ca = qw (ma mb mc md me mf mg mh); # 8-node cluster
@cb = qw (mi mj mk ml mm mn mo mp); # 8-node cluster
@cc = qw (mq mr ms mt);             # 4-node cluster
@cd = qw (mu mv mw mx);             # 4-node cluster
@ce = qw (my mz);                   # 2-node cluster
@cf = qw (m1 m2);                   # 2-node cluster
@cg = qw (m3 m4);                   # 2-node cluster
@ch = qw (m5);                      # standalone
@ci = qw (m6);                      # standalone
@cj = qw (m7);                      # standalone
@ck = qw (m8);                      # standalone

[download]
I don't want this, as this would be the easy solution :-)
(assumed a 10 columns output, should be configurable) 
 -----------------------------
|ma mb mc md me mf mg mh|mi mj
 -----------------------------
 mk ml mm mn mo mp|mq mr ms mt|
 -----------------------------
|mu mv mw mx|my mz|m1 m2|m3 m4|
 -----------------------------
|m5|m6|m7|m8|
 -----------
What I'd like to have is this (or similar): 
 -----------------------------
|ma mb mc md|mi mj mk ml|mq mr|
|           |           |     |
|me mf mg mh|mm mn mo mp|ms mt|
 -----------------------------
|mu mv|my mz|m3 m4|m7|m8|
|     |-----|-----|-----
|mw mx|m1 m2|m5|m6|
 -----------------
My idea: take two lines per cluster, find the biggest clusters, that fit's into the current double line and fill the remaining columns with smaller clusters/standalone machines. Continue with the next two lines and fill in the remaining stuff. Any ideas about better algorithms (or even modules :-)) I could use?
Or some keywords to feed Google?

Thanks
Andreas
Update: fixed two times m1 in @cf

In reply to Visualisation of environment by AndreasL

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