FET with five terms / for Finland (Five 7 weeks terms in a school year)

[Liviu Lalescu]

I am ready with the two new constraints, I hope they are working correctly.

Please get your custom version as a snapshot (fully functional, only the name contains "snapshot" so I can release a final version later) from here: https://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download/custom/mathmake/

I added from the GUI the constraints for 8A for these four subjects: MA, VT, VP, and LI (the new constraints, as we talked). There is the file liviu.fet as an example, obtained by importing from your CSV data and adding the new constraints. This file also contains the necessary students structure (I added the year 8 and divided it by two categories).

I am not sure how to consider adding automatically adding the two new constraints after importing your activities from the CSV file. Could you consider to add the constraints manually from the FET GUI for your whole data, or it is too difficult? (please also open with a text/XML editor a .fet file, you can see its structure - you might be able to generate the constraints with a program of yours.)

Please let me know.

[mathmake]

Thank you ,Liviu!

I'll make some testing with greater number of student sets. Adding constraints in GUI or manually to XML-file is fine to me.

Markus

[Liviu Lalescu]

You are welcome, Markus!

It is difficult to add the constraints manually in the XML .fet file. It was just a suggestion if you can create some script or program. Adding the constraints by the FET GUI should indeed be acceptable, since there are filters for the activities there.

Please keep me informed, I am very interested if FET is able to manage a timetable for your institution.

There may appear other problems, just write here and we'll try to solve them.

After you check that the two new constraints work OK, I would like to release a version which does not contain the word "snapshot" for you. This is very easy, just a matter of making an archive and compiling it for Windows.

[mathmake]

Hi Liviu,

I've made more activities including all 9th graders to run some tests. FET suddenly shuts down after placing about 100 activities of little bit over 500 activities. A file of my test set is as an attachment. A version with less constraints runs nice. Is it a lack of memory or what do you think?

One more question. What is the best way to force some activity to be placed in certain term?

Markus

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello, Markus,

It is a bug. I isolated it, but I need more time to re-understand what I did there and fix it perfectly. Memory usage is very low. I just access an array with -1 index.

To fix a single activity in a term: activity preferred starting times/time slots.
To fix more activities in a term: activities preferred starting times/time slots.

[Liviu Lalescu]

I fixed the bug and released a new snapshot version. Please get it from https://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download/custom/mathmake/ and let me know.

[Liviu Lalescu]

I wanted to check if we can add more constraints, and it is possible. I did a progressive approach. See the attached files (in an archive). The last file solves more difficultly, sometimes seem not to solve.

I added min hours daily for students = 4, max span per day = 4, max gaps per day = 1, and then progressively decreased the gaps per week and early max beginnings at second hour to 1.

The last timetable (liviu6.fet) looks really nice, but I am not sure if you need it like this, and also if you add more activities it might be impossible, so please start without my constraints and slowly increase the difficulty if the timetables are possible.

[mathmake]

Thank you, Liviu!

It runs smoothly. I'm ready to add activities of students at the 8th grade.

Markus

[Liviu Lalescu]

I am glad it works!

I decided to add a version without "snapshot". The same location: https://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download/custom/mathmake/ . Don't worry, we can always add new changes, if necessary.

[mathmake]

I've done some more testing. It's amazing what you can do with this software!

Markus

[Liviu Lalescu]

Thank you for your feed-back! I am always happy to know it is useful 

Keep me informed of your results, I am very interested.

[mikkojoo]

Hello both of You!

As a headmaster of 480 student school and 50 teachers, I've had quite busy times lately. For some strange reason I decided to relax by discovering open source timetabeling software. I have to change my medicines...

Well, I found this very interesting conversation. My situation is just like Mathmake's and I will install this version provided here. I have been making timetables for 20 years with many tools including magnetic board    Lately using Untis in 5-semester school. Untis gets the job done nicely, but I have the feeling I'm using only 5 percent of it and not understanding the rest 95.
And I would be very pleased if I could use open source tools.

So, now there are at least two users in Finland  - well , I'm not a user yet, let's see.

BR Mikko

 

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello, Mikko,

Nice to meet you!

I hope you will be able to use this custom FET version successfully. I am here to help 

Just now I saw that the examples from mathmake are not included in the "examples" directory of FET - I should do this, because otherwise it is difficult to understand the process. The examples are however available in the download directory for the mathmake custom version.

[mikkojoo]

Yep, I will study those.
FET seems quite straigth forward and easy to understand.
How to split one subject courses to five semesters I don't understand yet.

For example we have 3 courses Math on 7th year; 1 course is 3 lessons / week
That could go as:
3+0+3+0+3
2+2+2+2+1

in any combination.

But we have 1 course religion. And that I want  to all three lessons in on one semester, so:
3+0+0+0+0 or
0+3+0+0+0 or
0+0+3+0+0 or
0+0+0+3+0 or
0+0+0+0+3 or

i'll keep studying


 

[Liviu Lalescu]

Please see the attached simple file. See the activities list and the all time constraints list. You need to use the last 2 constraints in the activities time constraints menu.

Please let me know.