Steel Cutting Optimization - Excel Macros

I have a given length of steel bar...Example(550 feet)
I have various cut lengths that I can pick from...
14'-10".....13'- 9".. 12'-8"........(up to 6 different lengths)

I need to know the best combination of lengths to cut the long bar into to have minimal scrap left when we get to the end of the 550 feet.....

Cut as many of the longest cut lengths possiable.....Cut as few of the shortest cut lengths possiable

Due to the fact that I will have to convert this to a PLC application when completed, I want to find a mathmatical way to do this inside excel and not use the "solver"....Assuming that I/we can come up with an equation to do this .....
Any and all advice/help would be appricated.....

Hi Everybody,

First post on the forum, have only recently joined and im hoping that someone can help me before my head explodes!

I am trying to prepare a simple Material Quantity List for some Steel materials.
The materials are all in specific sizes.

What i want to do is, as i input the length, width and height of the structure in the spreadsheet, the Material Quantity List will generate the quantity of each piece of material i will need.

Does anybody know of a formula for this. I have been trying to use the IF function and getting absolutely nowhere, all suggestions will be highly appreciated!!

Need a formula to calculate weeks stock in hand based on 12 months forecast.

Here is the example.

Jan2011 Feb2011 Mar2011 Apr2011 May2011 Jun2011 Jul2011 Aug2011 Sep2011 Oct2011 Nov2011 Dec2011 ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- Product XXXXX Actual/Forecast : 174 1674 574 574 524 524 524 524 524 728 728 728 New Purchases : 0 0 0 0 1002 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Goods In Transit: 0 1506 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Other Movements : 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Closing Stock : 1270 1102 528 -46 432 -92 -616 -1140 -1664 -2392 -3120 -3848 Week Stock in Hand ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

So, in Month of Jan2011 the Closing stock is 1270, need a formula to calculate how many weeks will this stock cover look at future forecast.

I need to create a IF statement where it will count the character length and if not 6 then add leading zeros to field to make a fixed 6 character length .. so if field is 489 then the if statment would make it 000489

Hi All,

I am trying to make excel automatically add a leading zero to values which are 5 digits long;

i.e. number input is 15185, then excel automatically changes it to 015185.

If I put a Customer Number Format of 0##### it works, however, a user could put any length of number into these cells, and if the number is less than 5 digits I don't want a leading zero.

Is there any way of writing a small macro to sort this out.

The numbers would be input into range B16:223.

Many thanks,


Andy