QuoteHello Liviu,
Congratulations on your wonderful software. As we are trying for the first year to use FET to produce our school timetable, we are experiencing certain problems and cannot easily find solutions. I therefore submit them to you in the hope that you may have simple suggestions that will help.
We have a rather complex situation at our high school. The five years of high school are divided into two cycles that have an overlap of five minutes between the 4th and 5th periods. We have teachers that give classes in both cycles, so they cannot teach period 4 in cycle 2 followed by period 5 in cycle 1 (they would be late). How can this be indicated as a constraint?
I see this as simply considering period 4 and period 5 as a single period 4_5 (compress periods 4 and 5 into a single period, 4_5 or other fake name). Everything works, except that the timetable does not show you exactly the periods (you have only this visual minor problem).
Let me know if this works or I made a mistake.
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We also have part-time teachers that should not have courses spread out over the whole week.
Constraint teacher not available or constraint teacher(s) max days per week.
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Attached is a document that explains the arrangement of courses that we have used until now. Is this reproduceable with FET? The scenario wished for is an even distribution between morning and afternoon periods of each subject.
If you refer to spreading subjects evenly between morning and afternoon, you have constraint subactivities preferred time slots (say subject is spread into 4 per week. The components 1 and 2 morning, 3 and 4 afternoon. The same if spread into 5 per week - leave 5th component to be distributed randomly).
If you need each component at a different hour, you can also use constraint subactivities preferred time slots.
If you need the exact diagonal arrangement, let me know and I'll think if it is possible (I did not think of it, yet, because it may not be what you need).
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After FET produced a timetable that accounted for the constraints given, we found the need to move certain periods to improve or correct certain situations. How can this be done easily, without having to redo the whole timetable manually to take care of the cascade of changes?
I am not good at this, but I think you may lock all activities, unlock a few and regenerate. There is no moving of activities possible in current FET Edited to add: I mean to move activities by dragging them with the mouse when viewing the timetable).
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Any help would be greatly appreciated.
John Carey
Collège Notre-Dame
Montréal, Canada
QuoteWe have a rather complex situation at our high school. The five years of high school are divided into two cycles that have an overlap of five minutes between the 4th and 5th periods. We have teachers that give classes in both cycles, so they cannot teach period 4 in cycle 2 followed by period 5 in cycle 1 (they would be late). How can this be indicated as a constraint?
If you can't avoid the 5 min overlaping, then i like Livius answer.
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After FET produced a timetable that accounted for the constraints given, we found the need to move certain periods to improve or correct certain situations. How can this be done easily, without having to redo the whole timetable manually to take care of the cascade of changes?
In my opinion you forgot to add constraints if you see improvements. So add that constraints and generate again. (Or, if you need to move only a few activities, do it like Liviu wrote.)