The Moving Sofa Problem: 3D Printing to the Rescue

Ya sure... and with sound it goes something like this...

Ow,. Ow,.., ow......ow... finger, finger,.stop.. stopp stopp.... your pinching my finger..... my arm is slipping, I'm losing my grip have to put it down, ... I can't. My hand is stuck... try tilting it ,.... no the other way, I think it'll go........ maybe if you raise it and go at an angle.... should have taken the legs off... can we back up a little....

I leave it to the movers....

Who probably have backup....

I could use a Dr. Sofa -- the last litter of puppies really did a job on ours :-).

It's going to be expensive, but I think we can save it.....

They missed a golden opportunity there.

'Sofa King' is far better:

'Sofa King easy!'

'Sofa King fast!'

'Sofa King reliable!'

2D imensional sofa eh? Prob a bit hard on the arse...
Del

Well it just so happens....

Ugh. This why we don't put mathematicians in charge of real life important stuff like moving furniture.

Turn the sofa on one end so it's now the equivalent of being a three dimensional rectangular box. Solve from there using the sofas (3D box) L x W x H and the related hallways W x H dimensions using basic geometry.

BTW, I had this question in a college math class and totally ruined the lesson by throwing rational real life basic three dimensional furniture moving sense at it.

Is one entitled to stand a rectangular sofa up on end?

Tried that a couple of years after we bought our first house, there no was no way it would go out the door. We’d bought the sofa with the house, what we didn’t know was the previous owners had moved the door. A saw solved the problem.

Last summer I helped a friend move who had a large sofa. The kind that has the recliners on each end. Big and heavy and would not fit through the door to her new place.

2 minutes with a vice grips and a 1/2" wrench and it went in just fine as three separate pieces then stayed that way since she liked being able to move it around and set it up as a three piece multi function furniture set.

How many decades of mathematics would that have taken to figure out if it could have been at all?

Kinda rather why I hate theoretical mathematics. You can have the worlds best mathematicians working on the problem by the numbers for a century or more and find no solution to it yet some dummy with a shred of common sense and a wrench can solve it in real life less than 5 minutes.

You can have the worlds best mathematicians working on the problem by the numbers...

My calculations on moving that large sofa says its going to rain on Monday.

Yes, when moving. The sofa usually has to be lowered or raised, so there are stair landings to consider as well. Rule #1: The sofa will never fit until you bend or break it down.

Even more fun with pianos, a limited amount of materials for wrapping, supporting, and a limited number of stout guys to do the job.

The trick: Don't end up under the thing.

Another trick: You may always stand the sofa up, as long as it fits within door threshold vertically to near vertically.

Corollary to rule #1: Sofas have a way of expanding to exceed the dimensions of the hole they are about to be put through.