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This is a "Travelling Salesman Problem". 470 stops in one route??? That's an awful lot.
To guarantee that the best route has been found, the record is currently just under 100 stops I think!! The problem is that it is a "NP complete" problem and takes exponential time to compute.
So 470 would take longer than the age of the universe with the fastest supercomputers in the world. And 2/3rds overnight is pretty damned good.
Luckily if "almost the best" is good enough then the problem becomes easier, and I bet this is what MapPoint is doing.
I could get you a solution quicker than "overnight" but it is harder to guarantee that it would be better than MapPoint's.
Richard |