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Thank you for responding.
Volker: That's exactly what I do every time that I want to generate a new timetable with locked activities. BUT, for my school I need some specific activities to be "permanently" locked, i.e. I could (equivalently) input this information as activities in preferred time slots. I just wondered if there is some way to import this information as activities in preferred time slots in order to save the FET file, and therefore avoid potential mistakes by unlocking and locking activities every time I need to generate a new timetable.

Hello! Is there any way (after generating a timetable and after locking specific activities) to import these locked activities as activities in preferred time slots? It seems that I have to do this manually...  Thanks a lot!

Liviu, I can do whatever I need with the current type of locking/unlocking. Simply, this type of locking/unlocking activities that I suggested would make the process faster for me. It's not really crucial to make a custom version for this, if the other users are not going to use it. Thanks!

Liviu, I think that it would be easier if this teachers-time-horizontal-like timetable had just the necessary information and nothing more. I.e. just the teachers' names and the student groups (and the locked/unlocked indication). This would result in a far more "compact" timetable than including information such as subject titles and tags.

Liviu... about locking and unlocking activities...
After generating a timetable and pressing the "Teachers" tab, the generated timetable appears in a teachers-days-horizontal-like form. Of course we can lock and unlock activities on this type of timetable. I wonder if it's easy (for you) to add an alternative form. I think that the teachers-time-horizontal-like form is easier to use for locking/unlocking activities, since it presents the whole timetable at once. What do you think? Thanks!

Thank you for responding!

After using FET-READ by Petros Nouvakis I realized that some features of FET such as Locking/Unlocking activities after the generation of a timetable or assigning an activity (or more activities) to specific time slots (an activity has a preferred time slot) before generating the timetable, are highly useful under certain circumstances. FET has some really nice options for locking/unlocking activities, but a GUI similar to FET-READ seems to add flexibility to the process. If the user could lock/unlock all the activities, or some of them (via spreadsheet-like selection options; columns, rows, all activities, etc.) or place one ore more activities in the preferred time slots, the process would be simplified. Liviu, is it possible to implement such an "extension" (similar to FET-READ, but with more options) as a part of FET itself? Sometimes the semi-manual timetable editing (or preparation) is necessary... Of course the user should be really careful, especially if his manual adjustments do not match the constraints... Thanks.

[max]

If the teacher has 15 hours per 5 days week, why can't you use max 3 hours daily 99% or similar weight, alongside with min 2 hours daily 100% and max 4 hours daily 100%? You can combine constraints.

PS: Dummy activities do not slow down the process.

Thank you Liviu! Your answer is really interesting!!!

For example, if one of the teachers has let's say 15 hours per week (5 days per week), of course it would be far better if I could create a timetable with 3 hours per day (5 days a week), BUT if this is too difficult, it would be useful to constrain the "min hours daily"=3 with 98% and constrain again "min hours daily"=2 with 100%. So, FET would search for such solutions. Thanks!

But there is an other easy trick possible:
Set min hours daily = 3 and give that teacher a single pseudo activity. (of course you maybe need to decrease the number of max gaps of that teacher then.)

Thank you Volker! I use the pseudo-activities for some other reasons. I think (I'm not sure... I think) that they slow down the solving process... But, I'll try your trick.

I am sorry, but It is more difficult than this. When I designed the constraints min hours daily (for students) I tried weights under 100% and things were bad. If I made weight 99.99% or something like that, it was not respected for more days. If I made the weight greater, it was respected always. In other words, it is impossible to tune the weight for a single unrespected day (even if having the min hours daily 2 100%).

Min hours daily is very different in the manner of working than max hours daily. This is the algorithm.

I can tell you that you can constrain 100% min 3 hours on a special chosen day, using constraint activities occupy max time slots from selection (read the help for that constraint and ask me if you don't know how). So you might select 4 days manually and force the teacher to have min 3 hours on these days.

OK Liviu! I see! Thanks!

Thank you! To you, too!

I would not like to restrict these weights to 100%, because they would be useful, but restricting them to 100% is needed in the generation. To be effective, the weights would need to be something like 99.999% (otherwise the solutions would break the constraint too much), but then the timetabling process would be too slow.

Liviu, it might be a good idea, if you allowed the less than 100% weight just giving a warning (or adding an "advanced" tab, or "not recommended" tab, etc...), that the timetabling process would become really slow. What do you think? Maybe this would be useful. To give one more option for FET, which could be used under strange circumstances. For example, if one of the teachers has let's say 15 hours per week (5 days per week), of course it would be far better if I could create a timetable with 3 hours per day (5 days a week), BUT if this is too difficult, it would be useful to constrain the "min hours daily"=3 with 98% and constrain again "min hours daily"=2 with 100%. So, FET would search for such solutions. Thanks!

OK! Thanks a lot!

Hello! Happy New Year!

Liviu, there are some FET constraints (such as "min hours daily for a teacher") with necessary constraint weight 100%. I think that for certain circumstances it would be useful if I could input a weight of (let's say) 95% for 3 hours (for min hours daily) and 100% weight for 2 hours (for the same teacher), so FET should search for solutions for min hours daily=3 and if these solutions are not possible, it would search for solutions for min hours daily 2. Does FET lack such an option due to an inherent (coding) restriction? If not, it might be useful to allow other (than 100%) percentages for such constraints.

Thanks!

Thank you Liviu

I think that this is going to solve by problem!

When an activity is split (for example a subject is taught for 3 times per week) how can I find the specific ID for the activity for this exact day?