Starting rime

[Liviu Lalescu]

Imad, you convinced me that it is indeed a useful feature and I think we will add it for the next version.

So, activities with the same subject and students should have the same starting hour and room. I think I will add that multiple add/remove for the constraints activities same starting hour / occupy max different rooms, as I added in your custom version.

I don't think it is a good idea to add for the preferred times, because this is more different and there are not so many constraints. Also, you could add two tags to the activities and add only two preferred constraints, one for each tag.

For the multiple removal, just remove all the constraints (after a confirmation).

For the multiple addition, just add a constraint for each tuple subject+students, or design something more elaborate, with a check box for "same teachers", "same subject", "same activity tags", "same students" (4 check boxes)?

We will work on this tomorrow, because now I am quite tired.

Volker, it is a good addition, and will not bother the other users, because it involves only adding one or two buttons in the dialogs of the constraints activities same starting hour / occupy max different rooms.

[Imad]

Thank you, Liviu
That sounds good that you will add these features. Regarding the preferred time, you are right it can be solved using tags.
Thanks again and wish you a good night.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Thank you, good night! (23:14 here now)

[Volker Dirr]

I sent you the image and the explanation to your email

I didn't got it. Please sent to "u6m4@timetabling.de".

[Volker Dirr]

Volker, it is a good addition, and will not bother the other users, because it involves only adding one or two buttons in the dialogs of the constraints activities same starting hour / occupy max different rooms.

In my opinion it is unneeded, maybe even bad.
Let's assume all hours of tuesday the 1st hour will swap with all hours tuestday the 2nd hour.
That will not be allowed with above constraint.
But it will still work with a credit system, since the activities are still simultaniously. All activities got the same teacher and room. So even if a student need to repeat a subject, he might do that, since all are also at the same time.

Swapping the activities in time might help to:
- balance (or maybe even reduce) teachers gaps
- balance (or maybe even reduce) students gaps
- spread activities well (so for example students don't get always math in the last hour)
- datasets might be solveable, since with the more strict suggestion they might be impossible if teachers are missing a part of the day (since they might care about their kids, work at an other school, have trainee teachers, ...)

Thats why i think it is a bad idea to add such a constraint.

[Liviu Lalescu]

@Imad , I did it, please get the latest snapshot from the usual location: https://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download/test/ and let me know what you think. I did it for both same starting hour and occupy max different rooms.

Thats why i think it is a bad idea to add such a constraint.

@Volker Dirr , I am sorry to contradict, but I added it. It is not a new constraint (or two), just two new buttons. It is a needed feature for some (many) institutions, and we cannot reject the idea. It does not hurt. Please see the snapshot.

[Imad]

Volker, it is a good addition, and will not bother the other users, because it involves only adding one or two buttons in the dialogs of the constraints activities same starting hour / occupy max different rooms.

In my opinion it is unneeded, maybe even bad.
Let's assume all hours of tuesday the 1st hour will swap with all hours tuestday the 2nd hour.
That will not be allowed with above constraint.
But it will still work with a credit system, since the activities are still simultaniously. All activities got the same teacher and room. So even if a student need to repeat a subject, he might do that, since all are also at the same time.

Swapping the activities in time might help to:
- balance (or maybe even reduce) teachers gaps
- balance (or maybe even reduce) students gaps
- spread activities well (so for example students don't get always math in the last hour)
- datasets might be solveable, since with the more strict suggestion they might be impossible if teachers are missing a part of the day (since they might care about their kids, work at an other school, have trainee teachers, ...)

Thats why i think it is a bad idea to add such a constraint.

I sent you an email

[Imad]

@Imad , I did it, please get the latest snapshot from the usual location: https://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download/test/ and let me know what you think. I did it for both same starting hour and occupy max different rooms.

Thats why i think it is a bad idea to add such a constraint.

@Volker Dirr , I am sorry to contradict, but I added it. It is not a new constraint (or two), just two new buttons. It is a needed feature for some (many) institutions, and we cannot reject the idea. It does not hurt. Please see the snapshot.

Thank you,
I will make a test and get back to you.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Swapping the activities in time might help to:
- balance (or maybe even reduce) teachers gaps
- balance (or maybe even reduce) students gaps
- spread activities well (so for example students don't get always math in the last hour)

Volker, I think these are not cared for in the credit hour system.

[Imad]

@Imad , I did it, please get the latest snapshot from the usual location: https://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download/test/ and let me know what you think. I did it for both same starting hour and occupy max different rooms.

Thats why i think it is a bad idea to add such a constraint.

@Volker Dirr , I am sorry to contradict, but I added it. It is not a new constraint (or two), just two new buttons. It is a needed feature for some (many) institutions, and we cannot reject the idea. It does not hurt. Please see the snapshot.

Dear Liviu,
I made a sample test, and the result was perfect and very fast, WELL DONE ... thank you.
I will try to make another test with relatively larger data. I will let you know about the results.
Best regards.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello, Imad,

Thank you for letting me know! Indeed, we need to see how it behaves for a complete institution's data.

Volker told me this possible simplification: couldn't you simply use only 2 FET days: "Mon/Wed/Fri" and "Tue/Thu"? In this way the generation is faster and you don't need constraints of type activities same starting hour and activities occupy max different rooms. But I think you already excluded this approach because maybe it is not that simple (and I think I saw something in your file contradicting this easy approach).

[Imad]

Yes, maybe Volker is right, but this solution sticks all days together in case we need to handle any subject with single-day activity. The other thing is the form of the output file (Table) is unusual.

But with the last two additions, the FET will not suffer, and these buttons will be an option.
Thank you Liviu and thank you, Volker.

[Imad]

Hello Liviu,
I have a question about assigning certain rooms to certain student sets, for example, we want rooms F1, F2, F3 ...F10 for student sets A1, A2, A3, A4, A5...A50
and rooms M1, M2, M3... for student sets B1, B2, B3, B4, B5...B50
I found that I have to go to space constraints and allocate each room separately.
Do you have an idea how to make it faster?

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello, Imad,

If you want to use home rooms constraints, you can add a constraint home rooms for each students set. Add all rooms, select the first students set, press Enter, then press Down (it will go to the next students set), press Enter, and so on.

If you want to use preferred rooms constraints, you can add tag ATA to all the activities of A1...A50 and a single constraint preferred rooms.

Preferred rooms override home rooms. If you want to have some activities in a different room than standard, you need the first approach (home rooms constraints), so that you can change the home rooms behavior with preferred rooms.

[Imad]

I entered each set as you said, it is ok it is doing the job, but I thought there is another way to make it faster.
The other way that you proposed, using preferred room constraints doesn't work as we need, because there will be teachers who teach both sets A and B, and the tag will be either for A or B.