Abstract:Based on the caving degree method, this paper proposes a heuristic approach to solve the cuboid packing problem by incorporating the cuboid arrangement strategy. Experiments on 15 classic LN benchmark instances, performed by Loh and Nee in 1992, have shown that this approach has the potential of performing very well. In the difficult instance of LN2, it achieved a volume utilization of 98.2%, which is an improvement from the current best record by 1.6%. In another difficult instance of LN6, it achieved a volume utilization of 96.2%, which matches that of the current best record. For each of the other 13 instances, it maintains optimal layout that packs all cuboid items into the container, matching current best record. As a whole, the average volume utilization on the 15 LN instances is 70.96%.