Latest Contributions by NaAn

Hi, You don't need to double the capacity on routes. The drop-off order (the second order of the pair) has the delivery quantity which will not be counted towards the route capacity limit. Thanks. Anna ... View more

Hi Stefan, You are solving the periodic vehicle routing problem. Unfortunately, the current solver does not support it. I have come up with a workaround for a similar problem before (see the attachment). In that case, some orders need to be visited every 2 weeks or every 3 weeks. The user wants to split the service territory into equal demand service areas and then run VRP on each service area independently. You might figure out a solution for your problem based on that workaround. Thanks. Anna ... View more

Hi Andrew, If all routes are identical or you know which route will serivce the round trip orders, there is a solution: Create a "round trip" specialty. Set the two order pairs which represent the round trip orders the "round trip" specialty. Set the "round trip" specialty to the route which will service these orders. When routes are identical, you can randomly select any route to use. Hope this will solve your problem. Thanks. Anna ... View more

Hi Xiang, You may use this line to continue the loop in VBA: On Error Resume Next Thanks. Anna ... View more

Hi Andrew, There is a simple way to lock the relative sequence between two orders. In your case, please set assignment rule to 1 which is preserve route and relative sequence and give Order A a sequence number smaller than Order B. VRP solver will guarantee to schedule A in front of B. When loading preassigned orders, VRP solver does check the pickup/delivery quantities to make sure no capacity voilation exits. It looks like you didn't set up the problem properly. For a pair-order which represents one passenger pickup, you will need to set the PickupQuantities to 1 for the first order in the pair and DeliveryQuantities to 1 for the second order in the pair. Set the route capacity to 1 if you only have this single order pair. Please let me know if you have more questions. Thanks. Anna ... View more

In the proposed idea, you do not know where the route ends in the previous day without solving the problem, therefore, you cannot begin the route from where it ends in the previous day. It looks like you come up with the similiar question in the other post, I answered it with a workaround: http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/55648-VRP-solver-for-planning-multiple-day-routes Thanks. Anna ... View more

Hi, There is no perfect solution for your problem with the current solver. But you can still solve it with the following workaround. Assuming you are expecting to visit all orders in a week, the idea is to create a long continous route per driver for the whole week, assign orders into it and then break the weekly route into 5 daily routes afterwards. Here are the steps to setup the problem: Create 4 routes, one for each driver. Set the route start time to 8am, set the MaxOrderCount to 150 (or even larger), leave MaxTotalTime, MaxTotalTravelTime and MaxTotalDistance field empty. Set the route end depot to the specified depot. For each route, introduce 5 MaxCumulWorkTime type of breaks with the proper MaxCumulWorkTime value (i.e. 4hrs for the first break, 13hrs for the second break if the lunch time is 30mins long.) Solve the VRP layer and break each route into 5 shorter routes. Another option is to create a route for a driver on each day of the week. See the post here: http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/20842-VRP-and-time-window?p=68250#post68250 You can use the time-window break to represent the lunch break in this case. The only problem with this idea is you have to set at least one depot (either start or end depot) for a route. You might use some hotel location as the end depot in the middle of the week. Hope this is helpful. Thanks. Anna ... View more

Hi, Your problem can be solved with VRP solver. Since you expect to visit all orders in 3 weeks, you can simply create 15 identical routes (one for each weekday) with route time window set to [8am, 5pm]. Then load all orders into the VRP layer and solve it. The solver will assign orders to the daily route wherever it is possible. If you want to make sure routes have the balanced load over these 15 routes, you may set an OvertimeStartTime with a proper CostPerUnitOvertime value on routes to penalize the long route (see more details here http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#/Vehicle_routing_problem_analysis/00470000004v000000/). Please let me know if it is not clear. Thanks. Anna ... View more

First question: when I want to use the Overpelt Fabriek site as the start and end depot, is it enough to just load it as a location for the Depots? You can see in attachment the example for route 1 for which I loaded 378 locations as the orders and the Overpelt Fabriek site as the Depot. Yes. Loading it once and use it for both start and end depot. Second question: How can I add the number of orders in the area as the MaxOrderCount for each route? Right click Routes NA class to open Route properties and set MaxOrderCount value there. I see you opened ArcTool dialog in the screenshot which is not needed at all. I would highly recommend you to go through the tutorial because all those questions are answered there. Also you can open the layer I created for you in my previous attachment to get a good understanding. Good luck! Anna ... View more

Hi Thomas, Your problem is simpler than I thought. For each area, you only need one route. You can use Overpelt Fabriek site as the start and end depot, and use the number of orders in the area as the MaxOrderCount for the route. Since the all orders in an area will be assigned to one route, solving the problem will take a while. Thanks. anna ... View more

Hi, When you know the sequence numbers for all orders, you can use "AssignmentRule set to (1) Preserve route and relative sequence" to lock Depot B as the second last visit in the route. However, if you don't know the sequence numbers, VRP solver cannot solve your problem directly. There is a workaround for it. You can use Depot B as the end depot for the route. This solution will not include the part traveling from Depot B to the end Depot A. If you want to include this part in the solution, after solving the VRP layer, you may load Orders and Depot Visits into a route layer as Stops in the sequence created in VRP layer, and add a copy of Depot A as the last stop in the route layer. Solving this one will return you the complete route. Thanks. Anna ... View more

Hi Thomas, I looked at the data. You didn't add the time cost attribute. I added it for you which looks like this: [ATTACH=CONFIG]13153[/ATTACH] In your data, each area includes more than 600 orders. Since you want one truck dedicated to each area, I would suggest you to create a VRP layer for each area and solve the three areas independently. Otherwise, you have to introduce the specialty to match orders with the dedicated vehicles (see VRP help to understand specialties). In addition, one truck cannot finish visiting all orders a day, so you have to introduce multiple routes with each representing a day to cover all orders. Finally, in your street segment data, there are some disconnected areas where duplicated junctions were created and each  is connected to a subset of adjacent edges. I used the Integrate tool to merge them. Solving problem on a disconnected network will cause some unassigned orders. Please find the network dataset (disconnected Dataset and fixed Dataset) and the corresponding test layers in the attachment and also watch this VRP vedio: http://video.arcgis.com/watch/686/vehicle-routing-problem-example-appliance-delivery Thanks. Anna ... View more

Hi Thomas, You need a "Time" cost attribute which has the unit of "seconds, minuts or hours." You may either add a new travel time field in the Road Segement feature class and use it as the time attribute source value, or just use a field evaluator to calculate the time value based on the distance field value, i.e. time = distance/60. [ATTACH=CONFIG]13112[/ATTACH] In addition, I noticed that you open 'Make Vehicle Routing Problem Layer' to solve VRP. Unless you want to use the model builder or write your python script to call the solver, you don't need to use this tool. In ArcMap, you will need to click Network Analyst on the Network Analyst toolbar and click New Vehicle Routing Problem to create a VRP layer. Please read the tutorial for more details: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#/Exercise_7_Servicing_a_set_of_orders_with_a_fleet_of_vehicles/004700000062000000/ If it still doesn't work, could you please post your the network dataset here? Thanks. Anna ... View more

Hi Thomas, VRP solver needs a time cost attribute. The time cost attribute is used to define the traversal time along the elements of the network. This attribute is required, since the vehicle routing problem solver minimizes time. Please search for "Time Attribute" in VRP help page for more details: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#/Vehicle_routing_problem_analysis/00470000004v000000/ Here is more information for network attribute: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#/Understanding_the_network_attribute/00470000000m000000/ Thanks. Anna ... View more