Help on a Spanish High School

[auriolar]

Hi,
I'm trying to generate a timetable for my school using fet. But It seems I don't setup it correctly.
Data:
We've 6 years. (1-6)
Each years has some groups (A-B). Some subjects are common for each group 1-A has math, 1-B has math...
Other subjects are done among groups: 1-A-1 has Histoy, 1-A-2 mixed with 1-B-2 have History And 1-B-1 has Histoy, All with different teachers and at the same hour.
There are also other two divisions:
1. Sutdentes from year 1, can choose among (S1,S2,S3), where all students are divided in those subjects (could be 2 S1), and are at the same hour
1. Sutdentes from year 1, can choose among (E1,E2,E3), where all students are divided in those subjects (could be 2 E1), and are at the same hour

We have 30 slots, and all of them have to be filled.

My setup is as follows:
Year: 1
  Group: A
    Subgroup:1-A-1
    Subgroup:1-A-2
    Subgroup:1-A-S1
    Subgroup:1-A-S2
    Subgroup:1-A-S3
    Subgroup:1-A-E1
    Subgroup:1-A-E2
    Subgroup:1-A-E3
  Group: B
...

When the timetable is generated S1 (for 1-A) can overlap History (for 1-A-1), but all of them are from the same group, so that is wrong.

How can I setup it?

Thanks,

Asier

[Liviu Lalescu]

You need to divide year 1 (and 2-6) automatically by 4 categories. Then add constraints activities same starting time.

[auriolar]

Thank your for your fast answer.

I've been thinking and I feared that.

So I'll have:
Year: 1
Group: A (First category A,B,C,...)
Subgroups:
(Second category:1,2...)
(Third category: S1,S2,S3,...)
(Fourth category: E1,E2,E3...)
1-A-1-S1-E1
1-A-1-S1-E2
1-A-1-S1-E3
1-A-1-S2-E1
..
1-A-2-S1-E1
...

That's right?

It will be hard to setup all these activities with so much subgroups, but I'll try to do it.
If (When!) I get it I'll post the input file.

Thanks

[Liviu Lalescu]

Maybe you have a misunderstanding: I think that you can add the years 1-6 and divide each one by 4 categories: category 1 (divisions: A, B, C, ...), category 2 (divisions: H1, H2, H3, ... - I am not sure I understood History divisions), category 3 (S1, S2, S3, ...), category 4 (E1, E2, E3, ...). Then you can choose to work only with groups, so you don't care about the internally automatically generated subgroups - which are too many.

[auriolar]

Thank you again,
I'll try to explain with one example:
Student1 is assigned to group 1A:

• Most hours he stays with the whole 1A group
• 2 hours a week he goes with other students from other groups to H1,H2...
• Other 2 hours a week he goes with other (posibly differents) students to S1,S2
• For some subjects he goes with students from group B with teacher1, while the rest of group A stays with teacher2, and the rest of B with teacher3

The 3 firsts points could be done as you say, but the last one I don't se how.

Also in higher courses, we have some subjects for the whole group and 5 subjects group  and the student hast to choos one from each group.

Thank You.

[Liviu Lalescu]

I am not sure I understand exactly the problems. I hope good ideas will come to you as you develop your file. I hope that you need only to use groups, but I also must consider your affirmation that you cannot. I hope others can come with advice.

[auriolar]

Thank you again.

I understand your approach, but I doesn't match our case. It works when the subjects for each groups are common. I mean, if students from 1A, 1B, 1C... are taking the same H1, ths subgroups creation will create subgroups 1A_H1,1B_H1,1C_H1... and also the group 1H1, which contains the subgroups from 1A,1B,1C... which take H1.
In my case some of those subjects are thaught only on 1A and 1B(let's say H2), so if I take the previous aproach I'll get subgroups 1A_H2,1B_H2 and also 1C_H2, and the automatic group 1H2 will contain 1A_H2,1B_H2 and 1C_H2. So I'll have to delete a lot of sugroups if I take the automatic creation approach,or I'll need to create all subgroups manually.
And that is a huge work,at least for this first year.

So how did I solve it?
I did create subgroups for each subject, even if those where not exclusive (I had 1A_H1,1A_H2 and 1A_S1, 1A_S2) I I told fet not to overlap subjects thaught at the same time (H1,H2 and S1,S2...), and it did the trick.

I'll try to figure how to automatically enter data as you proposed me for the next year's timetable. We've near 2000 activities, so manually entering each one with many sugbroups is a huge task.

Thanks again for your help and your fabulous software! 

Asier

[Liviu Lalescu]

Thanks for the appreciation!

You don't need to remove empty subgroups. FET must cope with many empty subgroups.

But any solution is good.