Anyone know how to solve this efficiently? I have a group of, say, 200 objects. I want to know how many groups of 6 I can make with those objects. The limitation is that there is a list of object pairs, whose objects can''t be in the same set of 6. Anyway to do this without listing all possible sets of 6 and testing if any pairs that can''t be together are in there? Thanks

Yes, yes there is.

This is whats known as a Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP). Google for it.

There''s a few different ways to go about it. Try using techniques such as backtracking, and heuristics like "Least Constrainint First", and "Most Constrained First".

Its a pretty cool problem to play around with. Also, depending on the number of objects and the number of constraints this could take a very long time to solve.

I will check it out. Thanks!

Jim