Messages

Hello,

I have a suggestion regarding the multi-threaded generation, when no timetable is generated, there can be more than one highest timetable, and if it completes, there can also be one or more timetables

As far as I know, there is no way to select which highest (or completed) timetable to load in the application after generation ends, to view it the app itself not using the files, view conflicts, export and so on.

I think currently some timetable gets selected and I am not sure which one, and I may want to work with another one (highest/completed).

So maybe it would be good to be able to select which one to load if there are multiple ones generated (or multiple highest) when attempting to close the multi generation window (after having a look at the timetables using the generated files one can decide).

Another suggestion is very subtle and I don't know if it is on fet, but on single generation, when a new generation is stopped using view highest, it indeed writes the new files in the old highest folder (I enabled single overwrite), but it somehow doesn't update the last modified date of the containing folder itself.

I am not sure if fet should do it. Still, it definitely helps to have that last modified time of the folder the same as the files inside it, because many times there may be newer folders that show on top when I sort using last modified. I will have to look for the highest folder, double-check the last modified date of the files inside, and so on.

Thank you!

That's sad 😥

I will look again if other constraints can do the job.

Unless it forces gaps bw activities in different rooms, I think it may work.

Having a subject per room is desirable yes, it should help with that, if it can't fit multiple subjects' activities in the same room, or if really necessary, fit it with a gap to allow for some buffering.

Thank you, Liviu, always appreciate your response 🙏

I will try and see if it works.

Hello,

In an exam timetable, each subject has several exam sessions of varying counts between subjects. They are usually consecutive. There can be another subject's exam in the same room after the first one given there are hours left.

I want to have at least one empty gap between the last activity of the first subject and the first one of the second one in the same room so as to make room for teachers to be able to get out and let others in etc, if it has to put the second subject exam in the same room.

I've looked into teacher min gaps between room changes but this is not quite what I want.

I've also looked into min gaps between a set of activities but it works on the activities entered pairwise and I  don't know which activities will end up consecutive. (Maybe I can do all the possibilities between the pairs of every other subject? I think it will have an exploding number of constraints this way)

Min gaps bw ordered pair of tags is specific to teachers and students, not rooms (that can have different teachers and students)

I am looking for something like room min gaps between two sets of activities, or room min gaps between a set of activity tags (and I can then assign a different tag to each subject's activities so that no two subjects touch)

Maybe min gaps between activity tag switches?

Any ideas or workarounds? I can automate the creation of a workaround if it involves many constraints until a new one is introduced, if any.

Thank you!

Edit: teachers have max 0 room changes to stay in their room all day.

Hello,

While I agree with Liviu that the updated timetable can always be accessed from the UI, it may be more convenient to add a global setting in case someone wants to disable the option to create a new folder / enable overwrite, and it applies to both single and multi.

For me, I don't think a check before each generation is more convenient.

I appreciate your reply, Liviu, thank you 🙏

Oh I think that is a genius idea to use this constraint in combination with the dummy hours.

But there comes three other problems, if there are multiple courses in the same hour, FET can mix the activities of subjects in different rooms e.g. nothing to enforce same subject in the room and its dummy intervals. This is also applicable if I use dummy rooms.

Also I can't use same starting time for activities of the same subject because of dummy hours (I need the course exam activities to be simultaneous)

Also in some cases there could be only a three-activity subject left for a day and needs to be placed in a big room of capacity 5 other than a smaller room because there would be a gap in the proctoring for that smaller room otherwise.

It is quite complicated I know to work around the multiple activities per room along with the other exam constraints

But I am still considering doing it with FET, I believe there is still a working workaround.

Please let me know if you have any insights and Thank you again for your time, Liviu 🙏

Hello,

I want to build an exam timetable using fet. The smallest unit of students will be groups of 20 (or a fixed number). Courses have exams, and each course belongs to a year or more, so I should define years aka Programs and Levels like First, Second, etc., and Groups with course names in this level and subgroups to be Group (1-20), Group (21-40), etc.

I will add an activity for each subgroup for all subgroups with no teacher and with a subject name that is the same as the group name that has this subgroup. (I am not sure if there is a better way here and in the above setup)

I want each year to have one or two max courses per day (exams) so I will add a constraint max activity tag per day for student 1 and assign tags based on years (activities of the year First takes First, and so on).

and maybe max 2 for some years if groups/courses are larger than exam days.

then I will add same starting day+time constraints for activities of the same subject so they are spread into rooms in the same period. The problem starts here (assuming all is good up till now):

Some rooms are big and can accommodate multiple student units aka 3 for 60 students and others are not, so how to handle this? I thought to add x dummy rooms where x is the number of groups a room can take at a time but this has a problem for me and it is that is doesn't enforce FET to fill the room if it places an activity in it.

If I go for this solution, and a course has 5 activities, with 5 rooms available (one of then has 2 copies so total 7 rooms), nothing can prevent it to schedule 2 (not the full capacity of 3) of them in Room A and one of is copies and 1 in B and 1 in C.

and I don't want to group students (e.g. one activity of 100 students) and enforce big location using tags without having to make multiple rooms because there could be multiple arrangements for each course that may be better that my enforced setup.

I also thought of making multiple dummy hours instead of dummy rooms to accommodate multiple activities per room, and then processing the raw output to make it look as intended but I don't know how to constrain it properly.

Thank you in advance for all of your insights!

Hello Liviu,

I am sorry for the late reply.

I have just tested it and it is working perfectly! Thank you for taking the time to do this!

Hello Liviu,

Thank you so much for doing this! I will see and let you know!

Hello, Liviu,

Wow! Good to hear! Thank you for the great work as always

It is not a problem for me and I don't think it will be a problem for many people, also they can delete the old generated folders every now and then or at the end of each work cycle (semester etc). You can also add a setting for them to choose the default behaviour to overwrite or create new with suffix if you think it could help.

I tried it and it works perfectly in single and multi, good job 🥳

Hello,

Thank you for thinking about this!

I agree that the count of directories does not reflect size.

and yeah it is a good idea to check of a directory exists and then increment the last numeric suffix.

could also add this as an option to enable or disable in the settings by default.