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Hello,
I'm posting these questions here because they relate to my specific situation, and this thread seems like the most appropriate place for them, but please feel free to move this post if necessary.

I'm currently using FET (official version) to generate a schedule with approximately 4,000 activities, approximately 100 teachers, 3 academic years with 6 student groups each and 2 subgroups per group (for a total of 36 subgroups), over 16 academic weeks of 7 days each (112 days total) with 7 time slots per day.
I imported my 4,000 activities via CSV, then began entering my constraints one by one (and I'm entering them teacher by teacher to ensure that the overall schedule makes sense).
Just entering a "teacher's unavailable time" constraint into the FET interface takes a long time given the 112 days per week, so entering all the constraints is very tedious.
I'm therefore considering copying and pasting directly into the FET file, using the constraints I've already entered as a template.
My first question is this:
Are there any forum threads that explain what you need to know about directly importing into the FET XML file? I'm particularly wondering about the correct places to put specific constraints, since simply placing them one after another at the end of the existing file probably doesn't work.

I also have a completely different question about the accumulation of constraints.
Given the large number of constraints, I use a strategy based on constraint priority levels to maintain control and clarity. So for each constraint, I've added a comment such as "level 1," "level 2," and so on, and I start the generation process by enabling only the "level 1" constraints; then, if that works, I add the "level 2" constraints, and so on.
Not all of my teachers have constraints at multiple levels, so it's easier for me to enable "level 2" constraints without disabling the "level 1" ones.
This means that for a single set of activities, I might have, for example, "min days between a set of activities=7" with a weight of 90% ("level 1") and "min days between a set of activities = 7" with a weight of 95% ("level 2"), and "min days between a set of activities = 7" with a weight of 99% ("level 3").
Or, again for the same set of activities, "a set of activities has a set of preferred time slots" with a weight of 99% ("level 1") for a certain range of time slots and "a set of activities has a set of preferred time slots" with a weight of 95% ("level 2") for a certain, more restricted range of time slots, and again "a set of activities has a set of preferred time slots" with a weight of 90% ("level 3") for a certain, even more restricted range of time slots (I assigned decreasing weights so that the combination of these constraints would be logically consistent).
Are such somewhat redundant constraints problematic? Do they take a long time to generate?

Thanks for reading all the way to the end .

Hello,
I've noticed that to start generating a timetable, you have to open the dedicated window from the main window and then start the generation process.
Would it be possible for that dedicated window to operate independently of the main window?
The idea would be to be able to work on a FET file, save the file, start a generation, and continue working on the FET file at the same time (and perhaps not be able to save until the generation is finished). With timetable generations that take several minutes, this would save valuable time. It could also be used to simultaneously verify certain aspects of the selected constraints, as well as the teachers or students involved.
Greetings

[My context :]

Hi,
I'm a french new user (with poor english, sorry) of FET.
I propose a return of experience and some suggestions.

My context :
an institute of a french university;
2 years of students with 6 groups and 2 subgroups each (24 subgroups in total);
6 hours per day and 5 days per week;
2 kinds of teachers : 20 "normal" teachers of the university and 40 "external" teachers  with few hours (between 1 and 6 hours per day);
16 differents weeks of  activities, the 60 subjects in total are not active in same time.
For example the subject S1 for the group 1.A with the teacher T1 will be week 1 to week 5, the subject S2 for the group 1A with the teacher T2 will be week 3 to 11,  and so on...
The difficulty appears with the teachers who need the same position an a week for the same activity and this for all the weeks of the activity.


My way to realise timetables :
My first idea was to use the 120 days per week custom version but I had two problems :
- I read the help and understood the idea of subactivity but I didn't find a simply way to import my repartition of activity/subactivity for each one.
- The not available time for teachers is very fastidious to translate in this version. Because a real available time, for example day1 hour4 must be duplicate by 16 : day1 of week1 hour4, day1 of week2 hour4, ... day1 of week16 hour4.

My second idea appears more efficient :
I used the normal version of FET an generate a « special week »  with a great part of all the activities for all the weeks.
It permits to place all the activities for all the teachers who need a « locked » timetable for each week.
This « special week » is clearly not optimal (and could be impossible to generate if there were too much activities) but in my situation it's possible, according to not optimized solution for teachers and students.
All activities had tags for each week they appears.

After generating that « special week », I save the file and the timetable and create each real week :
I open the « special week » file, save as week number xxx file, began by inactivating all activities and then activating the activities of the week number xxx  and finally optimmizing step by step the constraints of this week number xxx.
And this for all the 16 weeks.


My suggestions/wishs :
The most difficults :
- can have a real multi-week version of FET. For my context the 120 days per week had, at less, the 2 problems I explain in « my first idea ».
Probably less difficult :
- I'm very interested by an import functionality with subactivities and more overall an import functionnality with more options.
- In my use of FET I have a lot of active/inactive activities to change, I would be more easy if the possibility of check box for « active » exist in the activities dialog windows.
And finally probably the most interessing :
the possibility of using tags in the constraints, for example to activate/inactivate lock, permanents lock, available time for teachers /students, and so on...

I hope my text is comprehensive.
Thancks you for reading.