Advise on wether Ruleby is a good fit for *my* app/problem

[Kurt Werle]

I will be writing a system for laying out solar panels on a roof.

* panels have to have support every so often

* panels have to have support within some distance to the corner

* roof attachments have to be supported by a rafter

* roof attachments can only support so much weight

* rafters can only support so much weight

* panels are such and such a size

* The roof is such and such a size

* The rafters happen every so often

* etc, etc...

Starting with an empty roof (maybe with some obstructions), I want to come up with a maximum panel layout and a minimum number of roof attachments spread as evenly as possible across rafters.

This seems like a good fit for a rules based design system, but I'm not sure if ruleby is such a system.  In particular, it seems like ruleby (and the rete algorithm) are a good match for supplying a bunch of facts and rules (here are the panels and the attachments) and deciding if they are a valid layout.  But I'm not clear on whether or not I could/should try to generate a layout using ruleby.  In particular, I'm not sure how ruleby would start placing panels given a lot of facts & rules and an empty roof...

Thanks,

Kurt

[Jason Nah]

Hi Kurt,

The problem you are indicating is an optimization problem. You are trying to determine a maximum layout of panels given a set of constraints.  I don't think rete systems can really help you here. Rete systems deal with discrete facts. You are looking to find an optimum, of which there could be n number of solutions. 

Where it could help is to validate whether a given panel layout is valid. It can't determine the optimum as that would require some panel layout permutation generator which would not be a trivial thing to write. 

Hope that helps..

Jason

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[Richard Pruss]

Kurt you may find the one of the programs in this book helpful for searching for the optimum.

http://www.cleveralgorithms.com/

code is here:

https://github.com/jbrownlee/CleverAlgorithms

- Ric