Same subject activities tend to be at same hour?

[mikkojoo]

Sorry if this has been discussed before...

FET is perfect for our five-period/-term school. We've been wondering about one thing for years - does the algorithm work in such a way that it tends to place lessons for a subject at a certain time? What should we do so that lessons for a given subject use all daily lessontimes 1-4 evenly?

BR Mikko from Finland

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello, Mikko,

No problem!

If you don't constrain something, FET does not care. It is random. To make it even, you can use a few constraints subactivities preferred times. Take care, subactivities, not activities. If the subactivities of a subject for a students set are equivalent, say (A1,A2,A3,A4,A5), and you can permute them, you can add 5 constraints subactivities preferred times, for subject S, split index 1, preferred time only 1^st hour of each day (put X or red on each other hour each day) (one constraint), another constraint for split index 2, preferred hour 2^nd; the same for 3, 4, 5 (in this case you'll have a repeated preferred hour, since 5 activities > 4 hours).

You only need to add max(split of subject) constraints for each subject.

[mikkojoo]

Ok, thanks!
Again You answer so soon...

I have not used subactivities until now. Now I see how it makes more thins possible.
I think our quite many constrains make things go such a way that certain subjects easily get same times - the difficult ones always get those same times and others get what is left.

Other thing: our group structure unfortunately doesn't keep same year to year. Because of that we have to make some new activities every year (we use previous year as a base). These new activities are a pain, because I have to check every to have same constrains as those others from previous year.

Is there something I should think or do differently to avoid this - I mean to keep working constraints from previous year?

[Liviu Lalescu]

You're welcome! FET is my one and only job

If the IDs of the activities remain the same, you could do some XML file copy/paste, if you see the fet XML file structure. It has "<Activities_List>" and "<Time_Constraints_List>" to interest you. But it is more advanced.

Or some automatic fet XML generation, via another program or script. Or some FET customization.

[mikkojoo]

Thanks for this!
I think this is quite doable for me, but not for my collegues (I have only two years left before retirement). I will check this when this timetable is ready.