gurobi license expired

[kvaDrug]

I wanted to organize my shelves and order some boxes, I asked chat GPT about fitting algorithm, expecting a simple answer. To my surprise it said that the problem is NP-Hard. After reading wiki article, I started looking for existing optimal solutions, that brought me here.

Installing this project on Mac, wasn't simple, since python version isn't specified here and some dependencies doesn't support M2 Chip.

This setup worked for me:

python3.10

numpy==1.26.4
pandas==1.5.3

(other requirements stay the same).

Finally when I run BinPackingBranchAndCutSolver I got this error:
gurobipy.GurobiError: License expired 2023-10-25

What are the next steps? Should I buy a license to myself, or maybe replace gurobi with smth less efficient yet free?

[ktnr]

Thanks for posting a M2-compatible configuration.

Gurobi offers free academic licenses if you just want to play around a bit. If you want to use it commercially, you could switch to an open-source solver. It just needs to provide the ability for callbacks to implement the branch-and-cut algorithm.

You need not use the B&C algorithm that uses Gurobi as a MIP solver. Instead, you could also just use the CP model as a standalone solver for the BPP or OPP. The CP model uses OR-tools, which is open-source and free.

Alternatively, there are plenty solver-free packing libraries, e.g., the ones from https://github.com/fontanf.