[lja]

This looks so much like the bin packing problem [0] if you generalized it you could do a lot with it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_packing_problem

[teejae]

Yep, I'm targeting an optimization engine at a more specific problem that might be useful to lots of consumers.

[johnla]

Would you make that open source? I'm interested in this problem. I'm sure there are some OS bin packing algorithms but I not familiar with ones that have separation and linking rules.