Number of periods per day

[Nidhal]

Greets folks and thanks a lot for this big work!

Help needed, related to a private's university:

it's about how to place the hours of day, we got three types of regime on the day, here are the types:

Regime of 1h30:

8h15 - 9h45

9h55 -11h25

11h35 -13h05 break

13h15 - 14h45 break

14h55 - 16h25

16h35 - 18h05

Regime of 2 hours:

8h15 – 10h15

10h25 -12h25

break

13h55- 15h55

16h05 - 18h05


And finally the Regime of 3 hours is the same as the regime of 1h30, we just multiply it by 2 (1h30*2=3h) i think.

Could you please help me on this?

regards

[Volker Dirr]

two possibilities:

Variant 1:
you just call your periods "1", "2", "3", ... and use constraints activity prefferd time, so the activities are scheduled at the correct day.
i think this is the fastest but also not very nice looking solution.

Variant 2:
you add periods "8.15-8.20", "8.20-8.25", ... and also use constraint activity prefferd time.
so a 1h30 lesson as duration 18. (18*5min=1h30) and so on.
much more work, but sweeter tables.

You maybe should use 3 activity tags.
1 activity tag for activities of regime 1.
1 activity tag for activities of regime 2.
1 activity tag for activities of regime 3.
so you can add all the needed constraints easier.

i added this later:
so use constraints "a set of activities has a  prefferd starting time" and add only the few possible starting times to each activity tag.

[Nidhal]

Hello n thanks for ur answer.

ok for the 1st variant.

but for the 2nd variant:
We got only 60 periods, so if i'll put like you said: 8.15-8.20, 8.20.-8.25... till the last daily hour (18h15) I need more periods nope?

thanks again.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Yes, Volker forgot about the maximum 60 periods per day :-)

I didn't follow exactly your requirements, but maybe you could try with 15 real minutes per FET period?

I don't understand: you have some days with 1:30 periods, other days with 2:00 periods and other days with 3:00 hours periods in the same timetable (in the same institution)? Then you need to consider one of these 2 tactics suggested by Volker. If you have 3 timetables for 3 institutions, each with 1:30, 2:00 and 3:00 hours lessons respectively, then you can input the hours as they are, for each institution.

[Nidhal]

Hey sir

Nope, all those regimes (periods with 1h30,2h and 3h) are in the same day.

we start at 8h15 and we finish at 18h15 and between these periods we got sometimes 1h30 sometimes 2h and sometimes 3h so at the end when i generate i cant discover automatically the number exact of periods for each activity or the statistics of subjects/professors ...

you got my point?

cordially

[Nidhal]

sorry, but i cant try with 15 real minutes per FET period:

it'll be like this:

8.15-8.30
8.30-8.45
8.45-9.00
....

we have periods which start at 9h55, 11h35, 14h55, 16h35... see? so that's why Mr Volker suggested me to use 5min per period.

PS: we got 4 types of activities tags: Cours, TP, TD, CI: they dont have always the same periods, so we can have TP with 1h30 TP with 2H and TP with 3h, same with the rest of the activities tags, so it's a little bit complicated.

I think here the only solution is that i call my periods: "1", "2", "3",... but that'll not be pretty good to admire, as Mr volker said.

regards

[Liviu Lalescu]

I still don't understand completely, but anyway: FET works with the same number of hours per each day. So you will need to decide on the exact number of hours (periods) and generate a timetable.

I think Volker can help you better, he understands your problem better than me. I have no experience with variable duration periods, this is unknown in Romania, probably.

[Nidhal]

yeah but if you added 60 periods per day, that means that you considered that maybe     many hours > 1 period > 10minutes minimum i think, so here periods can be the same or different per day

hope that Mr Volker can solve it

anyway thank you sir Lalescu

[Volker Dirr]

currently i don't have an other idea.

yes, i forgot that my 2nd suggestion with 5 minutes per periods mean that there are to many of them per day.

even if we increase the number of possible periods per day, the printed timetable will be very long and i think it also will not look fine (maybe a table even don't fit on a paper). (I think that number can be increased easily (by Liviu or me) if you want to try it that way.)

i guess changing your starting time of the periods is not an option.

hmmm....

How did you do your timetabling so far?

can you maybe sent me an (old) timetable of your school? i don't have experience with variable duration periods, but i am interested to see such an table. (maybe sent private to me, i will not publish it.)

PS:
I guess your school don't have a bell that is ringing at the beginning and end of lessons, is that correct?

PSS:
if you can compile yourself, i guess you just need to modify file "src/engine/timetable_defs.h"
you can increase the number of periods per day in line 128.
but i think the interface (FET->data->hours (periods) per day) will still only display 60 periods. But it should be possible to add periods just by editing the saved file (dataset) of your school (the .fet file.)