Hello!
First off, thank you, dear author, for your software!
I played with FET for some time and I am very satisfied with it. Good job! But now I started a serious work on a timetable for my school and I got stuck.
I entered all required data and time/space constraints. We have a space problem in our school.
6 hours daily per group/teacher/room
12 rooms
12 student groups
16 subjects
19 teachers
a total of 337 hrs weekly (of 370 max possible)
So we have nearly 100% used rooms if we do not count 3 specialized rooms (gym, info and workshop).
I had to enter constraints for all of our teachers/subjects/activities. But now FET won't even start optimizing. It says: "Cannot optimize, because you have no basic space constraints or its weight percentage is lower than 100.0%. Please add a basic space constraint with 100% weight."
I did enter all space constraints and all of my constraints are 100%. Also I paid attention not to 'overlap' constraints, that is, if a teacher has a home room, any further constraints related to him and his subject are not entered anywhere else.
I entered data three times from scratch and it's very tedious, so I'm pretty exhausted.
Any ideas what I could do to make FET start making tables?
Any help appreciated!
Regards!
You removed the basic space constraint. It is only available in the menu, not in the shortcuts. Please add a basic compulsory space constraint from Data/Space constraints/Miscellaneous/Basic..
If you start with a new file, one constraint of this type is automatically added. If you remove it, FET will not be able to generate the timetable.
Do not waste time reintroducing data, this is a simple error which can be solved very easily. I am sorry for the inconvenience. I should have made things clearer.
Yes, that solved my problem!
Thank you, Liviu!
Again, I am sorry. Because of your problem, I'll think in the future to forbid removing the basic constraints. I just wanted to give the user complete liberty, but it is not such a good idea.
For my information, how much time did you spend trying to solve this? And how did you remove the basic space constraints and why? (the answers to these will guide me to further action - should I forbid removing these constraints or not).
QuoteFor my information, how much time did you spend trying to solve this? And how did you remove the basic space constraints and why?
If you ask for solving the timetable, I am sorry, but the FET seems to get stuck at placing 33 of 333 activities. I think I'll have to find another approach to the problem. Perhaps some other constraints.
As for removing the basic constraints, when I first saw the FET message about missing basic constraints I didn't understand it and I just clicked on ALL button in SPACE tab and manually removed all of the constraints. There were about 60-70 constraints and I really didn't have the patience to read them all, so I removed them all.
Maybe, you should introduce two modes in FET: say, normal and advanced. In normal mode all of the basic settings (like basic space constraint) should be unavailable to a user. And in advanced mode, a user would have a complete control.
And, while we're here, would you care to suggest any tip or workaround for my problem?
Thanks, Liviu once again.
view the list of activities that are problemetic. think about them? what is the special about them? maybe always some group? same room? or same teacher?
then view current (incomplete) timetable and think about why it is not possible.
also an other variant is to increase the number of hours per day and generate. if it is possible check out manualy why it is not possible to solve with less number of hours.
it is always difficult say say more precisly without the datafile.
Hi!
Just to inform you that my table is progressing really fine. I have already gotten some usable tables. Maybe 95% acceptable, which is super. With some more tweaking, I think I'll succeed in producing 100% usable table.
I'm using ascTimeTables software alongside with FET and ascTimeTables, with approximately the same constraints, hasn't produced any tables so far. Really good job, Liviu!
QuoteHi!
Just to inform you that my table is progressing really fine. I have already gotten some usable tables. Maybe 95% acceptable, which is super. With some more tweaking, I think I'll succeed in producing 100% usable table.
I'm using ascTimeTables software alongside with FET and ascTimeTables, with approximately the same constraints, hasn't produced any tables so far. Really good job, Liviu!
Thank you for report! Please keep us informed of your progress (maybe in another thread, I am not sure).
What things are not satisfactory? You get activities with the same subject not spread enough over the week?
Thanks to your report, I decided to add additional user information when he wants to remove the basic constraints. I have released a new snapshot, maybe you would like to test this (see the Snapshots board - the snapshot is 5.12.2-snapshot-24 Jan 2010 - the topic about this snapshot will last until the release of official 5.12.2).
By the way, what FET version are you using? The latest 5.12.1?
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What things are not satisfactory? You get activities with the same subject not spread enough over the week?
No, FET usually reports about soft constraints (activity spread) being broken at the rate of 9-12% which is acceptable. The problem is about lower year groups where FET tends to generate days with only one period, and some days with 6 periods which is unacceptable. And when I limit those groups to five periods max daily, FET has problems completing tables. Maybe I should leave six periods daily and relax "A student set begins early" constraint. It might help.
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Thanks to your report, I decided to add additional user information when he wants to remove the basic constraints. I have released a new snapshot, maybe you would like to test this (see the Snapshots board - the snapshot is 5.12.2-snapshot-24 Jan 2010 - the topic about this snapshot will last until the release of official 5.12.2).
Thanks, I will.
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By the way, what FET version are you using? The latest 5.12.1?
I'm using the official 5.12.1 version.
QuoteQuote
What things are not satisfactory? You get activities with the same subject not spread enough over the week?
No, FET usually reports about soft constraints (activity spread) being broken at the rate of 9-12% which is acceptable. The problem is about lower year groups where FET tends to generate days with only one period, and some days with 6 periods which is unacceptable. And when I limit those groups to five periods max daily, FET has problems completing tables. Maybe I should leave six periods daily and relax "A student set begins early" constraint. It might help.
Why don't you use min hours daily for a students set? 2 or 3 or more, as you need.
About the spreading activities: you may try to improve this, by raising the weights of min days between activities constraints (you have a convenience function for more constraints at once in the min days constraints dialog or use advanced->spread). But I recommend this in the end, after you have a good timetable.