Tag constraints

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello, math!

I don't understand. (c) exists, it is Activities preferred time slots/starting times, or Subactivities preferred time slots/starting times - specify only the activity tag. This is also what I wrote to Zsolt - it is best to keep the number of constraints to the minimum necessary.

I think Zsolt suggested to add for each subject a tag, if it is easy or hard for instance. But I prefer not to complicate things - it would be a bit more work to add an activity tag to each activity instead of to a subject, but the data is easier to follow in my opinion.

[math]

Hi Liviu!

Assume the following scenario:
- I have 20 lectures for 1st term students
- I want to specify ONE single constraint for all these lectures (saying that such actities can only be scheduled to first and second block from Monday to Friday)
- If it is impossible to generate a schedule with that constraint, I want to modify ONE SINGLE constraint (e.g. allowing also the third block to be used)

At the moment I have to add a time constraint for all my activities. This means:
- I have to add 20 time constraints (for my 20 first term lectures)
- If necessary, I have to modify all these 20 time constraints

From the technical perspective, I fully agree with you: it is possible to get first term lectures scheduled in the way I want. But it takes quite some effort to add/modify all these 20 constraints. And it's not only just these 20 constraints. We also have constraints for 1st term exercises, 2nd term lectures, 2nd term exercises, seminars, etc.

So instead of managing constraints for a handful of tags, I have to deal with hundreds of activities.

And besides the time aspect, this way of constraint management is also quite error prone. It happens quite easy to miss constraints when modifying them or changing them in the wrong way.


Hence, I really would appreciate time constraints on tags.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Yes, of course, this is what I am talking about. Just add an activity tag to these 20 activities, and a constraint activities preferred time slots, specifying only this activity tag and the allowed times. I don't understand the problem. Please see this constraint: Activities preferred time slots (not activity, but activities, plural).

Please let me know.

[math]

Hi Liviu!

INCREDIBLE! This seems to be EXACTLY what I was looking for. Sorry, I did not recognize the plural (activities) in your answers, so I was checking the wrong constraint. Thanks a LOT. It's really fascinating to still find new functionality even though I'm using FET for quite some time. I guess "FET" is the abbreviation for "FEature beasT". 

[Liviu Lalescu]

I am glad it works