Messages

-Can you please name the tool (I am German)?
-Do you also know non-free tools (which have good algorithms)?

Thanks,
ah

Thank you for your suggestions, but I can't change the system. The students select their courses and I have to schedule them.

I formulated the problem as an integer linear program and then solved it with standard software.
I was able to solve my problem in about 15min. But I think, this is only as a "perfect" solution (every student can get all selected courses) was found. If the problem has no perfect solution, the integer programming approach will fail to find a good solution

I still wonder, whether there is a timetabling-software where I can directly formulate my problem.

... yes, you are exactly right.
And we use the flexibility that we have 4 different "English"-courses to avoid conflicts.

My setting is roughly as follows:
Each student (say about 100) selects 4 subjects out of a list of about 20 subjects.
Some subjects are chosen quite frequently, others only rarely.
Then, for each subject a number of offers (courses) is determined (roughly one course for every 20 students).
This is done by hand.
There are only 5 time-slots to schedule the courses.
The goal is that all (or at least as many as possible) choices of the students can be satisfied (without time conflicts).

There is no room- or teacher-planning.
There are some side constraints (like that the courses should have between 15 and 25 students).

Hope the problem becomes more clear now.

I have a typical timetabling problem, but that some courses are offered more than once. Each student that want to take the course has to make the course exactly once.
Does anyone know a timetabling software that can handle this special timetabling problem?