Here at my work, we teach both for highschool as for higher education (majors). Teachers can work on both levels.
The classes for each case have different durations: the former is 50 minutes long, and latter 60 min.
I want to use FET in order to make the entire timetable at once, as we have more than 80 teachers and so many student sets.
By following the given tips, I'm using the FET 'hours' as real 10 minutes ( the commom factor between 50 and 60min), and it works fine.
The highschool morning activities start at 7am and finishes at 12:20 pm, with a break from 9:30 to 9:50 (three periods before and after the break).
The break for the majors can be at 9am or 10am (two or three classes before breaking).
This way, In highschool here, it's common to split an activity (two 50-min periods) in half by a break:
7:00~8:40 - math
8:40~9:30 - physics
9:30~9:50 - break
9:50~10:40 - physics (continuation)
10:40~12:20 - english
If I only had highschool here, I would just ignore the 9:30~9:50 hours, and my timetable would be generated without I have to worry about splitting physics specifically.
However, those are teaching hours for the majors.
If I set these hours (9:30~9:50) as a Not Avaliable time for the student set, the timetable cannot be created, because the activities don't fit the 3-break-3 time division. (suppose all of them are 2 or 2+2).
So my question is, finally: Is there a way to let FET ignore those breaks when allocating the activities (ie. a break doesn't mean activity splitting)? Or anything that allows me to solve my problem without having to use two timetables (each for different education level)?
Your proposed feature (to split an activity over breaks) is very difficult. You may use constraint two activities consecutive or grouped, but again it is a bit difficult. We may talk over this if you want.
I think better this might be possible:
Do not add breaks.
Use duration 1 FET hour = 1 real FET hour for all the timetable. Add the number of days per week = 2*real_days, or the number of hours per day = 2*real_hours.
It is necessary for the teachers not to be present in two overlapping real hours at the same time. Say high-school has 8:40~9:30 (3rd, 4th of first week), and major 8:00~9:00 (2nd of second week). Then add two constraints activities occupy max time slots from selection for all activities of a teacher teaching these lessons, selected slots = 2nd second week, 3rd first week, max occupied = 1, then the second constraint selected slots = 2nd second week, 4th first week. A lot of work (many constraints for each real day, each teacher).
Please let me know what you think.