Sorting optical elements has significant potential during the construction of superconducting linacs like the ESS, in the same way that it has proved to be very effective in circular accelerators like RHIC and the LHC. In the linac domain, the elements of primary interest are cavities and cryomodules, instead of the magnets (of all sorts) that are routinely sorted in circular accelerators. Multiple cavities can be sorted to optimise individual cryomodules, and cryomodules can be sorted into

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... mised locations within the tunnel. Different sorting strategies are discussed and preliminarily evaluated in this paper. Central to the evaluation is the identification of goal (or penalty) functions that are maximised (or minimised), and which can be rapidly quantified by simulation. Also crucial is the availability of a modeling system that is realistic in its complex representation of the linac, and which can easily be modified and developed.