Messages

I came across FET when I was almost desperate about the schedule for the following semester, as I have been (manually- pencil+paper) working on it for a record three weeks, with no proper solution in sight  . I did not use FET from the first moment, as I had previously tried other timetable-generating softwares, with no positive results. But I begun studying FET. It takes a while to learn it, but you will discover something new each time you use it.

The last schedule built with FET took only about 10 days of hard work, so FET at least halved the time required for the timetabling activity. And I can't wait to try the new features this fall  8-)

will do, but later this evening

This is more like a (missing) useful feature, than a bug: when working in a file and opening a new file, FET should warn about saving the current working file. As of 5.14.5, it does not warn, so changes may be lost in the current file.

I had the same error some time ago, on my laptop, quite a few times

It was a random error, as far s I could tell, and occured always after editing the .fet file with a text editor; usually after pasting a lot of data in the .fet file.

I did not find any errors in thefile, but I had to manually do everything. So, for me, was related to copy-pasting into the .fet file

I checked. My mistake - groups/subgroups confusion.
Problem solved (again)

Thank you!

I have activities with groups and years. I should add constraints for both (groups and years)? As far as I remember, FET does not carry constraints from years to groups (if I add constrain for years, there may be group-level activities scheduled for that timeslot, and viceversa).
Am I making any sense here...?

I want the students to be unavailable at a certain time, but I would like to add this as a "light" constraint (less than 100% weight).
So far I've come up with this solution: define a dummy activity, and set "preferred time slot" for it, with <100%.

But this dummy activity may create additional gaps in the timetable if it is not placed as desired. So any advice is more than welcome;)

I have 8 timeslots per day. Students have 10, 11 or 13 hours per week.

Would it be easier to allocate these classes in only 4 days...? I use a dummy activity (no teachers), with length of 4 (which is also the maximum a student can have per day). So 4 days is quite easy to get

When I say "students", I mean University. So 18+ years old. Let's not go into any further details about this. I studied both in Romania and in Italy, and students' attitude towards learning was totally different. Why...? Well, the answer is a complex one, and we risk going off-topic here. We could chat in private if you want...

On topic now;)

My students have 10-12 "hours" per week (1 "hour" = 90 mins). However, they can have free days.
- max gaps per day = 1
- min hours daily = 2
- max hours daily = ? (no more than 4)
- max hours continuously=?
Is your idea valid for my case?

Dear Volker, it seems that my students and your students are not alike.

The Romanian students are staging a protest today: by the new Education Law, attending classes is mandatory; they are protesting against that! They do not want to attend classes!

Dear Volker, it seems that my students and your students are not alike. Neither my teachers and your teachers;)

Anyway, thanks for your suggestions, I will toy a bit with dummies and preferred time slots. This might be useful for the next semester, so plenty of time to explore...

Thanks again!

So no dummy activities trick here, right?

I already work with min_3_hours daily and max_1_gap daily for students.
Problem is I get a lot of:
- hour-gap-hour-hour-hour (and students have the tendency to not attend the first one),
or
- hour-hour-hour-gap-hour (students have the tendency to not attend the last one).

Worst case scenario:
- hour-gap-hour-gap-hour-hour (this is why i use max_1gap_daily; this situation is to be avoided under any circumstances).

- 3 hours continuously (my example from the first post) is the ideal situation.
- 2 hours continuously (your example) is also acceptable
I tried to think a way, using dummy activities, but with no results. That is way I asked on the forum;)

No. What I meant is this:
Students are OK with gaps (no matter how long - even 3 hours), as long as they have at least 3 hours continuously
Students don't want to come to school for only 1 hour, then leave, then come back (maybe for only 1 hour again).

I've been "battling" gaps for students, and there is no way of avoiding them, given the restrictions that I am facing.

However, after discussing with students, it emerged that they are not bothered by gaps, as long as they have at least 3 hours continuously. Even if they have 3 hours in the morning and 3 more in the evening (thus 4 consecutive gaps).

But I have no idea how to implement that in fet. ant help would be appreciated.