Most developers underestimate how annoying 3D packing logic actually is until they try building it.

At first it sounds simple:

“Just fit products into boxes.”

Then suddenly you’re dealing with:

rotations

weight limits

stacking rules

utilization %

multiple box sizes

container loading

item coordinates

upright-only products

I was recently testing different approaches for cartonization and load optimization and realized why most companies avoid building this in-house.

Even basic scenarios get complicated fast.

For example:

Which box creates the least wasted space?

How do you split 200 products across pallets?

What’s the most efficient truck/container arrangement?

Which items should rotate and which shouldn’t?

I ended up playing with a few APIs and visualization tools to understand how others solve this problem.

One I tested was P4P , mainly because it gives actual coordinate-based placement results and visual packing output instead of just “fits / doesn’t fit.”

Seeing real placement logic…