Algorithms for two and three dimensional Knapsack
Knapsack can be solved by dynamic programming in pseudo-polynomial time $O(nW)$ with $n$ the number of objects and $W$ the size of the knapsack. So, as long as your container is small (numerically), you can solve the problem efficiently. Note that you can adjust $W$ by changing resolution; no need to measure a shipping container to the µm, but meters are probably to coarse (depending on your objects).

Knapsack can also be approximated arbitrarily well in polynomial time (see polynomial-time approximation schemes).

However, Knapsack only considers fitting numbers into another number; it does not care about geometrics. If you need to "puzzle", you need another problem; considering Tetris, this is probably much harder than Knapsack.