How to group four classes to happen at once

[RainsburyMA]

Hello all,

Been watching FET develop for the last year and took the decision to use it this year with organizing my school timetable,

I however have come across a problem which im hoping others here could fix ?

Each of our year groups consists of 4 classes, and are streamed in some subject areas such as English and Maths.

Is there a way I can group all 4 to happen at once ? I know you can for 3

Thank you in advance,

[Liviu Lalescu]

I am not sure I understand correctly. But I can say that each activity can have an unlimited number of students sets, and also you have a constraint of type activities same starting time.

[RainsburyMA]

Hello thank you for the amazingly quick response,

The problem I found was for example Year 8 English as the Year group all have English, with 4 Teachers, but when it comes to Room allocation only 1 room from the 4 allocated is being assigned ?

I guess the question is, Can I have One Activate y take up more than one room ?

[Liviu Lalescu]

This is indeed a bad problem in FET. You cannot do that directly, but you could use dummy activities. Add 1 real activity and 3 dummy ones, constrain them at the same starting time, and add one from the four ones to each separate activity. It is maybe a lot of work, but I know no other solution.

[RainsburyMA]

No worries,

Could I ask it was put forward as an 'update' for the next version ?

Thanks

M.Rainsbury

[Liviu Lalescu]

It is already on the TODO list (item #114), but unfortunately it looks very difficult.

[Bobby Wise]

If the constraint Each teacher has a home room is set, will that not work?

[Bobby Wise]

Sorry I've just realized the problem.

[yush]

I have the same situation in my school. This is what I do. Basically what Liviu has suggested:

- Each teacher with his/her own activity, with no students.
- Either assign homeroom to each teacher, or assign room to each activity specifically.
- Then assign the whole year, or whatever classes are in the group with matching splits of activities but with no teacher.
- Assign all of them, the teachers' activities with no student and the student's activity with no teacher, with an activity tag, say, 07ENG.
- Go to activities with same time and day constraint, add all activities with the 07ENG tag together.

Now, you have just created a "block".

Personally, I always dream about a way to automate creation of blocks in FET

[Liviu Lalescu]

It is difficult. Because:

- Constraints for buildings. What building for an activity to consider, if it occupies two or more?
- Preferred rooms constraints. How to implement them? How to give a description to such a constraint?

And maybe more things might appear.

Anyway, I hope that using Yush's trick is not taking up too much additional generating time.

[yush]

I have tried both approach: A) Putting multiple teacher in the same activities; B) Splitting the activities with individual teacher and assign same time constraint to all to form a block. Approach B does not seem to be any slower then A. This is expected as activities with same day and time are placed together in the initial order. Approach A is much easier to set up but FET cannot assign rooms to the teachers. Approach B is more complicated but allows you to take full advantage of other FET constraints - both space and time.