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Hopenhower Hopenhower is offline
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Default Comparing Combinations of Sums

I am looking for some Excel expertise.
I have a set of tools for a press brake that are of various lengths. When a particular length of metal needs bent, some of the tools will be arranged to get close to the length of the material, but not over. I cannot figure out a way to do this though.
Example:
Stock tool lengths entered into spreadsheet:
12", 12", 6", 3", 2", 2", 1", 0.5"
Material length entered into spreadsheet: 10.75"

Excel would then figure out that the best combination of tools would be 6, 3, 1, and 0.5

I was originally thinking a way to do this was to programmatically list the total lengths of all of the combinations of the stock tooling possible on another sheet, then when the desired length was entered, it would look for the closest number on that sheet that was smaller, then it would list the tools used to make up that length.
As the number of tools increased though, the complete list might get too large.

Any other ideas?

Thanks in advance!