Mall Path Optimizer

This project generates a virtual mall with multiple floors and shops, then visualizes it in 3D using Plotly.

It also calculates an efficient walking path to visit all shops, based on a Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) heuristic.

You are most welcome to use this code in your commercial projects, all that I ask in return is that you credit my work by providing a link back to this repository. Thank you & Enjoy!

Note: Wait a few seconds for the demo GIF below to load...

Features

• Mall generation:

  • Randomly places shops on multiple floors.
  • Stores mall layout in JSON (mall_coordinates.json).

• Visualization:

  • 3D scatter plot of shops (with floor as the z-axis).
  • Interactive Plotly figure with shop labels.
  • Option to highlight an efficient walking path.

• Path optimization:

  • Uses a Nearest-Neighbor + 2-opt heuristic to approximate the optimal tour through all shops.
  • Includes a floor-change penalty to reduce unnecessary trips between floors.

File Overview

• generate_mall.py

  • Generates a random mall with a specified number of floors and shops per floor.
  • Saves the mall layout as mall_coordinates.json.

• view_mall_optimized.py

  • Loads mall coordinates (or generates them if missing).
  • Computes a near-optimal path to visit all shops using a TSP heuristic.
  • Visualizes both the shops and the computed walking path.
  • Displays the total path distance, including floor penalties.

Setup

Install dependencies in a virtual environment:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Run

1. Generate a mall:

python generate_mall.py

This creates mall_coordinates.json with random shop coordinates.

2. Visualize an efficient walking path:

python view_mall.py

Opens an interactive 3D scatter plot of the Mall with:

• All shops (blue dots)
• An optimized walking path (blue line)
• Start (Diamond) and end point (X) marked
• Path length displayed in the title
• Click and drag to rotate mall
• Middle scroll to zoom in and out

Configuration

• Number of floors/shops per floor: Edit generate_mall.py or pass custom logic to Mall.
• Floor-change penalty: Adjust FLOOR_CHANGE_PENALTY in view_mall_optimized.py:

FLOOR_CHANGE_PENALTY = 50.0  # higher = fewer floor changes