activities with more than one room (simultaneously)

[math_user]

I need to reserve more than one room for certain activities (e.g. lab and a "normal" room simultaneously). Therefore it would be great to have a possibility to assign say up to 5 rooms to a certain activity. Manual selection (5 drop down boxes) should be enough - automatic assignment of more than one room might be too complicated to implement.
It would be nice if say two rooms are listed for the activity ("room 1, room 2") and that the activity is visible in the rooms list under room 1 and room 2.

[Volker Dirr]

Your request is already a long time in the TODO (No. 114). Saldy it is complicated to code it.

so you need to use a workaround:

if you need 2 rooms only and if you work with unique home rooms, then place just the special room to that activity. so you have got 2 rooms, because the home room is empty.

If you need more rooms (or if the you don't work with unique home rooms), then you need to add more activities and use "same starting time" constraints to this activities. So they will care about the rooms.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Yes, as Volker said, it is unfortunately too difficult. You need to use dummy activities and constrain them to be simultaneous.

[Benahmed Abdelkrim]

Me too, in the same situation I already use the dummy activities and constrains "same starting time" as Liviu and Volker said.

[math_user]

Thank you for your replies!

if you need 2 rooms only and if you work with unique home rooms, then place just the special room to that activity. so you have got 2 rooms, because the home room is empty.

I use this for some activities - for others it is not possible (no home rooms!).

The workaround does not suit my needs. The rooms must be displayed on the timetables for teachers and students (not only in the timetable for the rooms) - and FET does not allow teachers or students (only subgroups) to have more than one activity simultaneously.

I understand that it is difficult to have n rooms for an activity and automatically assign all n rooms (according to constraints). But what would be useful for me is just 2 rooms (I select manually). The production of the caption ("room 1, room 2") is not difficult. Listing the activity in the timetable for both rooms should also be easy to do. I cannot see why this is too difficult. Can you provide me with more details? Or was my description not clear? (Up to five rooms would be nice, but two should be okay.)

[Volker Dirr]

The workaround does not suit my needs. The rooms must be displayed on the timetables for teachers and students (not only in the timetable for the rooms)

If you use the workaround, please go to FET -> settings -> timetables -> print activities with same starting time.
then you can see the rooms in teachers and students timetables.

[Liviu Lalescu]

The workaround does not suit my needs. The rooms must be displayed on the timetables for teachers and students (not only in the timetable for the rooms) - and FET does not allow teachers or students (only subgroups) to have more than one activity simultaneously.

Yes, like Volker said, use the setting to print activities with same starting times in the timetables. See my attached results for illustration.

I understand that it is difficult to have n rooms for an activity and automatically assign all n rooms (according to constraints). But what would be useful for me is just 2 rooms (I select manually). The production of the caption ("room 1, room 2") is not difficult. Listing the activity in the timetable for both rooms should also be easy to do. I cannot see why this is too difficult. Can you provide me with more details? Or was my description not clear? (Up to five rooms would be nice, but two should be okay.)

See above.

There are more reasons why I don't "simply" add more rooms to an activity:

1) It is a fundamental assertion of the algorithm. I began FET having in mind that each activity goes to a single room. Changing it would mean changing much of the code, like it was done for the custom version for US high-schools. It would be difficult and the outcome would not be that important, since you can use the above trick/workaround (which could maybe be automated by a FET customization).

2) If the user has buildings. How to consider building changes constraints? This does not apply to you, of course. But I need to keep FET universally valid.

[Volker Dirr]

about 2:
you might allow only rooms of the same building.

[Liviu Lalescu]

OK, so (2) may be dropped

[math_user]

Thank you for all your answers!

If you use the workaround, please go to FET -> settings -> timetables -> print activities with same starting time.
then you can see the rooms in teachers and students timetables.

That is very useful for me - thanks, Volker! I just have to remove other "same starting time" conditions (where I do not want them printed). This can be easily done after locking the times of all activities.