2nd, 3rd, ... best solution with Solver

[lrouquette]

Howdy,

I would like to have solver give me the top several soltuons rather than just the single (maximum) optimized solution. The only way I have been able to do this so far is create a new contstraint that limits the objective cell to "less than" the previous best solution.

Ideally I would like it to give me to the top 10 solutions for example but without having to adjust the contraint each time. Is this possible?

[MrShorty]

Short but useless answer to your question: I am optimistic that most things are "possible" with enough time, effort, skill, and ingenuity, so, yes, I think it is possible. The real question is how to get a solution.

1) If adding the constraint works, but you really just want to avoid the tedium of doing it manually, one possible approach would be to program a loop in VBA that will a) run Solver, b) set constraint, c) Run Solver again, d) set new constraint, and continue repeating until you have your top 10 solutions. The success of this kind of approach will depent on skill level with VBA and calling Solver from VBA. Technically, we are still adding the constraint to Solver each time, we are just programming it in instead of doing it manually.

2) If you understand your function well enough, you might be able to compute the top 10 based on the result from the max.
3) You may use a different algorithm, where you compute several different points in the region of interest, then use lookup functions to return the top 10.
4) Many times, it seems that we use Solver when we want to avoid doing algebra. If there is an algebraic solution, determined from the nature of your function), then an algebraic solution to the top 10 might be easiest.

and, I am sure, there are other possible approaches. A lot is going to depend on how well you know your function.