Simultaneous Lessons

[SoloRutz]

Hi.
I think its important to let you know that I just started using this program like 2 hours ago. In my school, l have a bunch of lessons that I'd like to run at the same time in the same class because one child cannot offer both subjects, e.g Literature in English and French are both in class S.2, but a child can offer only one, so I want to run the lessons in the same period. how can I set this up?

[Volker Dirr]

Please read chapter "years, groups and subgroups":
https://www.timetabling.de/manual/FET-manual.en.html#id_12

and (or) check the following video (start at around minute 2:00):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEuujWuu0oI

[Liviu Lalescu]

I am not that experienced in real-life timetabling as Volker, so please consider his opinion first.

To answer exactly to your question, there is a constraint in FET, activities same starting time (day+hour). But it might not be needed if you use students years' divisions, like Volker said.

[SoloRutz]

HI again guys.
I think I may be approaching this wrong. I entered each lesson as an activity. When i tried to follow both your directions, a pop- up diolog box says "the number of hours is 38 and you only have 36 free slots". BUT if some of the lessons were running simultaneously , the 38 activities would be done within the 36 hours. PS. 5 hours old with this software. Please guide me.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Please send us your .fet file and some examples of your timetables. If they are private send by email. Drafts of how the timetable should look like might help.

How many subjects like Literature: English/French (students year divisions) do you have?

[SoloRutz]

Oh man. Tons per year. Where I'm from they're called "optionals" because a child picks one or the other. I separated the years into groups and sub groups like Volker instructed. I think it would be so much easier for me if I could view the time table as a whole. To see whats happening in all years, or at least in one year as a whole, not according to what a student of a particular subgroup or group would see.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Oh man. Tons per year. Where I'm from they're called "optionals" because a child picks one or the other. I separated the years into groups and sub groups like Volker instructed. I think it would be so much easier for me if I could view the time table as a whole. To see whats happening in all years, or at least in one year as a whole, not according to what a student of a particular subgroup or group would see.

I understand the "optionals". You need to divide the years automatically by categories - I think you did that correctly.

To view the timetable as a whole you can consult the HTML timetables in ~/fet-results.

I attach a working version of your file. You have too strict constraints leading to impossibilities. Please consult from the FET interface the All time constraints dialog - I deactivated some constraints and added some comments.

There is a minor problem in your file - but which will take maybe a bit long to fix: You added each activity individually, not split. This is not a critical error, but the activities list looks ugly and the min days between activities constraints will have problems - they are not automatically taken care of. I will post two messages after this one with screenshots of how you should have done (attachments are too large for the forum). You have two variants to fix this: remove all the activities and add them again, or manipulate the .fet XML file with a text or XML editor (add a correctly split activity to see what FET does to the .fet file). The first variant is tedious, the second is more difficult but might be faster. And don't forget that the activities constraints referring to the activities ID-s which are changed/removed will need to be corrected/added again.

If it is too much work for now to correct the activities, you may leave it for later, and only add the new activities correctly.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Screenshot 1 - adding a split activity.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Screenshot 2 - how it should look after adding a split activity.

[SoloRutz]

Super Awesome!! Thanks for the tip. Will try it out with the rest of the classes whose activities I haven't added yet. Thanks for the punctuality BTW.