Seeking a scheduling algorithm

Hi gang: Does anyone have a resource, or better yet code, to solve the scheduling problem described below? Let's say you have a week calendar that has openings between 8:00am to 5:00pm for Monday through Friday (40 hours). Then you have an assortment of appointments that must be scheduled into the week calendar. Some of the appointments are simply a one hour per week, while others may be two, three, four, or five times per week and each appointment for an hour or more (up to eight hours). The problem is, knowing what appointments (i.e., twice a week for 2 hours, three times a week for one hour, etc.) must be scheduled for the week, what is the most efficient way to schedule these appointments into that week? The most efficient way is defined as scheduling appointments with little, or no, gaps in between appointments. For example, four one-hour appointments on Monday between 8:00am to 12:00pm is better than four one-hour appointments spread out between 8:00am to 5:00pm. Anyone have any solutions, ideas, resources, code? Thanks, tedd _____________________ tedd@sperling.com http://sperling.com