Messages

If you see anything I said that's wrong, let me know.  I'll investigate the upgrade in Ubuntu and let you know what I find out.

Thanks for all of your excellent work.

David

Thank you not only for the great software, but also for the willingness of the author and the community members to help.

http://flossed.org/fet_free_educational_timetabling

Ok.  I'll try this.  Thank you!

David

This is working!  Thank you.  I don't know why I didn't see that this was possible before.  I guess I didn't realize that you could add two teachers to an activity (for one thing).

Now I have to fix small things like some courses starting ten minutes later than the normal time.  Preferred starting times with an Activity Tag for these types of courses, or it that going to throw off everything else? 

Thank you again.

David

Ok.  I'll try this.  Thank you!

I tried subgroups and for grade 9 it worked.  For SrKg it didn't yet.  But even for 9 there is this new problem: students in the same class are now in different groups -- there is only one English and one Math which they're all supposed to take, but it's in one of the groups. 

The choices are:
Physics A 9 or Chemistry A9
Physics B 9 or Chemistry B9
History or Geography
French or Hindi
Art, ICT or Business

When I put all of these into a single class (there aren't that many students -- it's a brand new school), FET tells me (correctly) that there aren't enough hours or slots.  That's why I was trying to create more slots and making two subgroups worked -- but it separated the students.  Does anyone see a good strategy to use here?

Thank you,

David

I didn't see Tevi's suggestions (2 posts above) until a few minutes ago.  I'm finally to the point where I can take them in.  I'm trying subgroups.  Thank you, everyone.  I will report what happens.

The schedule worked, but I had decrease values (number of class meetings) for several courses in two different years (same ones: SrKg and Grade 9).  Just wondering how "splitting" a class works when grouping.  Would that possibly solve the space problem?

After FET output the schedule, I added room numbers (I took them out yesterday), and that created a new problem.  Now it's really broken.  Don't even know what to ask.  But I think the first problem of not being able to "fit" everything is more serious.  I'll let you know what I find.  Any ideas on whether splitting might help would be appreciated.

Best,

David

I have simply begun lowering the number of required meetings per week and that seems to have cleared the barriers.

Now on to normal problems such as getting periods to start at reasonable parts of the day ... preferred starting times, I suppose?  How to keep them to a minimum is the question. 

It's great that FET lets you test after each change.

Thank you.

I've got the colors, and, unfortunately, I've verified the time constraints.  There are too few time slots.  If a slot is created by combining an available teacher and students, and I've put in no students, how does fet know there aren't enough slots --

I'm getting that I have to add more slots during the same time period ... students don't all take the same course at the same time.  Do I have to add some kind of subgroup to create the needed slots?

Do I have to specify # of students?   If I have 100 students and 100 teachers, and 100 rooms, I could teach 100 courses at the same time, right?  So, this error -- not enough slots -- is saying ... I don't have enough what?

Thank you.  I will look at the constraints again. 

Thank you.  Yes, I'm very clear that 90 is less than 120 ;-), but I'm looking for a clue to where I screwed up.

I'll upload my file just in case.  Thanks for your amazing help.

David

I have been making progress with a k-12 schedule; yesterday got great help on setting up constraints.

Today, I thought I had set things up well, but when I tried to make a schedule ran into two kinds of errors, too few hours and too few slots.

Looking at the number of slots, I see that, yes, indeed, I do have too few.   For example, I need 121 but have 90. 

ERROR MESSAGE caused by attempting to generate a schedule:

"Cannot optimize for subgroup Sr Kg Automatic Group Automatic Subgroup, because the number of hours for subgroup is 120  and you have only 90 free slots from constraints students set not available and/or break. Maybe you inputted wrong constraints students set not available or break or the number of hours per week is less because of a misunderstanding"

However, I cannot understand why the units of time would limit the number of activities I can put within a time-period.  Somehow I have set up this limitation, but I don't know where.

Slots are the division (lowest common denominator of time) which you all helped me set up yesterday.  Are the number of available rooms the key?  Or teachers?  I removed all rooms and got the same error.

Have I given you enough of a picture for you to guess what I might be doing wrong?

Thanks in advance,

David

Well, activities are going in well.  In the meantime, I'm thinking about a requested constraint.  I see that there is a way to constrain a set of activities to have a common starting time.  However, I don't see how to group the activities into a "set" -- can someone suggest the best way?  I tried activity tag and subgroup, but couldn't see how to make use of either. 

FYI, the specific request was to have Art, Drama, PE and Dance in grades 1-5 start at the same time every day in order to create a planning time for the homeroom teachers.

I think it would look something like this:

11:00:00 AM      
Mon:          Tues:        Wed:         Thurs:               Fri:
Art 1            Drama 1      PE 1            Dance 1            Art 2         
Drama 2      PE 2            Dance 2      Art 3                    Drama 3
PE 3            Dance 3      Art 4            Drama 4            PE 4
Dance 4      Art 5            Drama 5      PE 5      

Thank you again,

David

Thank you!  Yes, modifying the existing restraint worked.  I _thought_ I'd been doing that before, but, obviously, I wasn't.  So, far so good.  I'm still putting in activities now; will report back on progress. 

Many thanks for the great help from this group.

David