How is household goods volume calculated in m³?

The basic calculation

Every item is treated as a box (a bounding box) formed by its three widest measurements. The formula:

volume (m³) = (length_cm × width_cm × height_cm) ÷ 1,000,000

example: 220 × 90 × 85 cm three-seat sofa
        (220 × 90 × 85) ÷ 1,000,000 = 1.683 m³

Total volume is the sum of all lines calculated this way. In Loduvo the volume is always recalculated on the server from the measurements; the volume the model states directly is used only as a cross-check, and if it deviates by more than 30% the line goes to human approval.

Why doesn't box volume fit the vehicle one to one?

Bounding box volume gives you the volume of the rectangular prism drawn around the item, not the space the item actually occupies. A sofa is not a box; a bicycle is nowhere near one. On the other hand, some of that empty space is won back because items can be stacked and nested.

In practice these two effects do not cancel out — the net result is that the raw volume total makes the vehicle look smaller than it is. That is why two separate safety margins go into the calculation.

• Dimension margin (5%): when the load plan is produced, every dimension of every item is enlarged by 5%. Because it applies in all three dimensions, it means roughly a 16% margin in volume (1.05³ ≈ 1.16).
• Packing margin (15%): in vehicle matching, only 85% of the vehicle's catalog volume is treated as usable. So a 20 m³ cargo body behaves like 17 m³ during matching.
• The two margins are consistent with each other: a 16% growth in volume and a 15% cut in capacity express the same reality from two different directions.

Measuring common items

Measure at the widest point: include sofa arms, cabinet handles and the door bulge of a refrigerator. Writing detachable parts (table legs, a bed headboard) as separate lines gives a more accurate result than writing one big box.

If you cannot weigh something, do not guess. In Loduvo, lines with unknown weight get a deterministic fill of volume × 110 kg/m³ (the industry average density) — a zero is never written silently, because zero weight makes the load look lighter than it is. That fill assumes an average density; for dense lines such as books, appliances or marble the real weight will be noticeably higher, so you should enter the weight by hand when approving those lines.

Catching implausible values

The biggest enemy of a volume calculation is a typo: a wardrobe entered as 2000 cm instead of 200 cm will single-handedly steer the whole move to the wrong vehicle.

That is why every measurement entered is checked against bands: an edge must be 1-500 cm, a single line's volume at most 15 m³, weight 0.5-1500 kg and density in the 10-700 kg/m³ range. Values outside the bands are rejected; combinations that are inside the bands but unusual (a one-tonne shoe cabinet, say) require explicit confirmation before they are saved — real exceptions such as a steel safe pass with a single click.