Fine tuning a timetable

[mercurialuser]

I was finally able to get a complete timetable. I had to "relax" some constraints and so I now have, for example, several teachers that teach the 6th period 4 days out of 5.

I'd like to unlock "something" to let FET try to shuffle lessons a bit... but when I tried in the past I never got a result. Can anybody please tell me how this feature actually works?

[Volker Dirr]

it's depending on your dataset. if you have got already a difficult dataset you normally need to unlock all activities.
if you have got an easy dataset you only need to unlock a few teachers. Difficult to say. Of course unlocking the teachers with "bad" timetables. In many cases that is not enough. So you need to unlock more teachers.

i must admit that i learned that my dataset is always so difficult that there are only 2 possibilities:
a) there is such an easy solution that i can see how to fix it myself (but i don't do that with the unlock feature of FET, i do that with the modify feature in TiTiTo, since that is easier to use in such easy cases)
b) i can't "see" an easy fix. i know that my timetable is too difficult and i need to unlock all activities. (add the new constraint and generate again.)
Unlocking only several things doesn't work with my very difficult dataset.

The unlocking "day" feature was/is used by guys that try to optimize gaps if a teacher is ill at school where students are allowed to have gaps. I am not 100% sure if that make so much sense to use that feature, but i know guys use it.

[Volker Dirr]

i forgot: The unlock last hour of students together with a specific day can be also used to care about ill teachers. but in real life it is not always easy to use, since it might need to much time to do that daily, the timetable might not be solvable and if the timetable is solvable it might change very much, so a lot of confusing teachers and students will read a long table at that day.
Small schools can do the supervision just with pen and paper. Check the "teachers' free periods" table for that. So they don't need the unlock feature.
But if you have a larger school i recommend to use a special software for that work.

[mercurialuser]

My timetable is not difficult, it is very difficult... so it is not possible to just unlock some teachers or classes and get another timetable...

I tried to test TiTiTo last year, but I had to stop after the ' problem... did not have time to test the new version... I will try again....

[mercurialuser]

I was able to get a timetable. It is not perfect but doable.

Some contraints were relaxed, some were made stricter.