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Okay, that's what I thought.

I think there is a work-around for me though...

To start, I can ignore individual students.  I know how many sections of each course I need, and I know which teachers are teaching which section, and I know how many periods I have.

I have a different program that can load students into courses and sections based on student requests.  From that I can see which conflicts arise.

Based on those conflicts, I can add some groups to FET to create dependencies that will force FET to come up with a different schedule that resolves those conflicts.

In this way, I can go back and forth between FET and my student-request loading program, hopefully coming up with the best schedule.

I'll try it and let you know how it works.

[OR]

First, thanks for all your help, I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.

Back to one of my original questions, which I think I can ask more clearly now.  (It may not be possible, but I just want to be 100% sure).

I have a subject, say, "English."  I know that I will have 5 sections of "English":  "English 1", "English 2", ..., "English 5"

I have 100 students (each student is a sub-group) that need to take English as well as several other subjects.  Each of these 100 students needs to be placed in EXACTLY one of "English 1" or  "English 2" or ... or "English 5"

Can FET do this?  In other words, can it choose to put a sub-group of students into one of several subjects, choosing which one based on other activities that need to be scheduled for the sub-group?

An example in the abstract (color used for emphasis):

Students: S1 and S2

Subjects: SubjA1, SubjA2,...,SubjA5,  SubjB1, SubjC1

Activities:
S1 needs to be scheduled for SubjA1 OR SubjA2 OR...OR SubjA5 AND SubjB1

S2 needs to be scheduled for SubjA1 OR SubjA2 OR...OR SubjA5 AND SubjC1

Thus, if there were only two periods available the following schedule would be possible:

Per. 1   SubjA1     SubjB1
Per. 2   SubjA2     SubjC1

Since the students can be placed equally into SubjA1 or SubjA2, they can be scheduled.

Can FET do this?  Place a student into one of several options while taking into account other subjects that need to be scheduled?

Perhaps I need to use "divisions" or "Activity Tags" which I don't fully understand yet.  Just wondering.  Thanks.

Well, yes, that's what I'm doing - individual students as sub-groups.  As for splitting the years, there's no logical way to do it in our system.  We don't separate boys and girls in any meaningful way, for example, but that's okay.

I tried the import feature, but it seems to only allow me to import one item at a time -- at least for subjects.  It seemed easier and more efficient to just generate the xml.  I'll look at it some more.

Thanks.

Ok, thanks.  I'll take a look at that.

I think the crux of the matter is that the high school at which I work is scheduled much like a university.  Essentially, each student is an individual group in FET.  Each course is an individual subject in FET.  Each FET activity is a student request for a course, etc.

I'm working on having my database spit out the xml for a FET file and  then I'll see what it generates.  I'm hopeful...

Thanks for the quick response.  I think I'm starting to get a handle on it.  I need to play a little bit more.

What about viewing the schedule by period?  I'd really like to see a list, or grid, of all the courses scheduled into a particular period.  Is that possible?

I really like this program from what I've seen, but I'm getting confused about terminology, I think.  Let me describe what I'm trying to do:
In short, I'm trying to create a master schedule for a typical American high school.  Our setup is as follows:

• We have 10 periods each day, and each day is the same.
  

• We have about 100 distinct "sections" of courses - for example, a course may be "English 1" and there are 5 sections of English 1.  A student who requests English 1 could be placed into any of the 5 sections.  Some courses may only have 1 section.
  

• Each teacher teaches some number of course sections - For example, an English teacher may teach 2 sections of "English 1", 2 sections of "Writing", and 1 section of "Shakespeare".

• Students request some subset of courses they want to take.  Some requests are more constraining than others.  For example a highly specialized course might only have one section, but a more common course, like "Enlgish 1" might have many sections.
  

I'd like FET to able to churn on all of this data, but I don't know which are the appropriate fields to set.  Has anyone done this to derive a master schedule for such a typical high school situation?  

Help appreciated.  Thanks.

Yep. It worked.  I misunderstood what "A set of activities has the same starting hour" meant.  I assumed it meant that I had to declare which period I wanted a set of activities to start in.

Thanks a lot.  Oh, by the way, I LOVE FET.

[Math1 Math1]

AHHH, that constraint will help!

As for "fitting coures around others" this is all I meant: I need to develop a schedule like the one shown below.  Where Math, Science, History and English meet every day. PE, Art, Music and CS do not.  I don't care which period Math is scheduled into, but once it must be in the same period each day.

Does this help and/or change your answer?

         Day1   Day2
per1: Math1   Math1
per2: PE1      Art1
per3: Engl1    Engl1
per4: Mus1    CS1
per5: Sci1     Sci1
per6: His1     His1


Thanks so much.

There must be a way to do this, but I can't figure it out:

I have some courses that should meet in the same period every day, but I don't wish to restrict which period that is.

For example:
-I need to schedule a course called "English 1"
-It doesn't matter which period of the day it is scheduled, but once a period is chosen for that course it must scheduled in that period across the whole week.  
-So, if English 1 is scheduled in, say, 7th period, it must appear in 7th period every day.
- I have other courses that don't meet every day, which I need to fit around those courses that do.

Does this make sense?  Can't figure out how to set it up.  Thanks.