I am using MapPoint Europe 2004. I have approx 470 points in germany that i need to optimize. I have to find 2 points as close to an airport as possible and mark them as Start and End. I tried doing this at 16:00 last night and came back at 08:00 this morning to find that it was only 2 thirds of the way through. Does anybody know if this is simply due to the speed of my computer or is there a quicker way of doing this?

Any help would be appreciated, Thanks,

Mundiz

Hi,

How many times do you calculate a route?
What kind of algorithm are you using?

If you calculate X airport possibilities for 470 points, in a linear way, it will be a slow programm.

I don't know how Mappoint optimize the routes, but I use it with my own
algorithms when I have more than one calculation to do in my Home delivery system.

To have an idea, how would you, programmatically solve this Albert Einstein's enigma :

Five men live in five houses of five different color.
They smoke five different brands of cigar,drink five different beverages,and keep five different pets.

We know that:
* The Norwegian lives in the first house.
* The brit lives in the red house.
* The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
* The Dane drinks tea.
* The green house is just on the left of the white house.
* The green house owner drinks coffee.
* The man who smokes Blend lives next to the one who keeps cats.
* The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
* The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
* The man living in the house right in the center drinks milk.
* The German smokes Prince.
* The man who smokes Blend has a neighbor who drinks water.
* The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
* The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
* The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.

The question is ... Who keeps a fish?



May be there are other reasons of slowing your programm:

- Check if in your programm Mappoint is not laoded too many times
- In your programm make the necessary initialization of your objects and variables.


Bye

Yeh, thanks for that.

There are no algorithms, no multiple airports.#

1) You open MapPoint Europe 2004.
2) You import data for each stop from an access database.
3) You decide which airport a surveyor is to fly to/from.
4) You pick a stop closest to that airport and make it your Start.
5) You pick another stop close to the same airport and make it your End.
6) You click on a little button that says "Optimize Stops"

I am trying to find out whether there is a quicker way of doing all this without the optimization of stops taking 18+ hours, or whether i will just have to wait until this optimization runs through in its own sweet time.

Maybe i didn't state this question as clearly in my first post, for which i apologise. However i am genuinely trying to find an answer to my problem, and sarcastic emails about 5 guys in 5 houses do not help my cause, so if you'd kindly keep your sarcasm to yourself and to your friends i would appreciate it.

Please, only sensible answers to my question as i'm sure if you are in a position where you need help, sarcasm doesn't help you find an answer.

Thanks

Mundiz

Hey man, Cooooooooool,

I think if I take some time to give you an answer, this is not sarcasm.
This forum is not yours to have only the answers you want.
May be other people enjoy to try to solve Einstein's Enigma.

I think your machine is also sarcastic because she doesn't solve
your request in 5 minutes.

So, take it easy and have fun with your problem.

Although this website is not only mine, neither is it an einstein's enigma website. You may find this website useful:

http://submoon.freeshell.org/en/sphinx/einstein.html

However, if i had misread your post as a sarcastic answer then i do apologise, although i'd much prefer an answer to my question (as it is not a personal project, it is for my work).

Thank you for your time.

Mundiz

As you have now a positive attitude, I will explain why I was talking about Einstein.

If I was talking about that, it's because that also relates to the subject
of Optimization, like your problem.
There are 6 400 000 000 combination to analyze if you want to find the enigma solution in a linear manner.

The optimization in GeoMarketing is a science.
And Solving some problems like yours can take a lot of time
if the objective and methods are not very well defined.

Mappoint has his own algorithms to solve that optimization
by reordering waypoints. But sometimes you have to add more
programming tasks to custom your solutions.

But now I think that your request is simpler than I was thinking and
If you send me your database I can test it and find a solution for you
( but in a week, when your remarks of this morning are forgotten)

Auf wiedersehen

Did you have 470 stops in one tour ? I don't know any routing problem with 470 stops in a single tour

Rainer

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