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Come here because of the new feature which solved this problem. But I think we could have solved this without the new feature.

Since the the overlapping time slots are alternating, we can set up the hours like this:

18h30 - 19h20
19h00 - 19h45
19h20 - 20h10
19h45 - 20h30
20h20 - 21h10
20h30 - 21h15
21h10 - 22h00
21h15 - 22h00

In other words, the overlapping timeslots are consecutive.

Then, we can add an Activity tag for each course, a different one for each set of overlaping timeslots. For example, Overlaps-18:30/19:00, Overlaps-19:00/19:20, etc.

Use the "min gap (hours) between a set of activities" constraint for each set of the courses with the same overlaps-xx tag. Make the min gap to be 1, so they cannot be consecutive.

Would that work?

I timetable created in such way could be confusing to read, specially for someone not involved in generation.

Thanks! Downloading now, must finish a timetable today.

Amazing! Works like a charm!

Many thanks, Liviu, I send our regards from Instituto Federal da Bahia, tell me if you need something. I'll frequently visit your forum!

OK, I will think and maybe try to add some new constraints: teacher(s)/students (set) pair of mutually exclusive time slots. If so, I hope you could help with testing. I will let you know, here.

I think the solution should create a constrain to block teachers in an hour if he's working in another specific hour.

I'll be glad to test.

How many teachers teach both courses?

Not many, around 10, maybe less. But this difficult made our team to feed another software that is easier to swap activities after FET gave us a very nice starting point. I would like to make the entire timetable with FET, this is the reason to ask for help here.

Is your situation common for more institutions?

Here in Brazil, it's common to a big institution working with many "education categories" (Idk the english term for this), like latu sensu, strict sensu and technical degree, each one with his own time schedules and class duration, but sharing teachers. Almost every university and federal institute of education (where I work) could happen this.

I'm very happy with your help! Tell me if I could help in any way.

You are welcome!

I am analyzing your file and will let you know.

Could you please confirm: hours 1..20, there are 6 conflicts: (13, 17), (14-17), (14-18), (15-19), (16-19), and (16-20)?

Exactly

Thanks for reply, and another thanks for developing such helpful software!

Maybe I was not clearly. These two courses run with different and intersect time schedules, like I said, and some teachers work in both of them. Example, if teacher A has the first classtime in course 1 (18h30-19h20), he can't work in first time of course 2 (19h00-19h45), and if teacher B have the the 3rd classtime in course 2 (20h30-21h15) he can't work in 3rd (20h20-21h10) and 4rd (21h10-22h00) time of course 1.

If you like, my file is in this link.

My colegues and me think that FET should have a time constrain to prevent activities of same teacher/subjects in a group of classtime/hours, but if you can think another simplier solution to our problem, I would love to read.

Thanks for attention.

Hello,

I work in an educational institute where we have courses running in simultaneous but different time periods, like this:

Course 1:
18h30 - 19h20
19h20 - 20h10
20h20 - 21h10
21h10 - 22h00

Course 2:
19h00 - 19h45
19h45 - 20h30
20h30 - 21h15
22h15 - 22h00

How could we set FET to avoid put teachers in simultaneous activities in both courses? Is there a restriction to block periods if another one is occupied?

Thanks in advance!