Building with different periods (start times, lengths).

[dsvilko]

Hi!
First, I would like to say that I am a complete beginner both with FET and with making a timetable in general. I've been tasked with making the timetable for our school and was wondering if FET would be able to help with that.
The school has a be-weekly timetable (so I'll somehow have to use one of the workarounds) but the teachers also have classes in one of the local hospitals (about ~45 minutes  transfer time). I see I can define different buildings but the problem is that at the hospital the start and end times for each period are different (25min + 5min break as opposed to 45min and 5min break in the school).
How do I manage that?
Thank you. I must say that I am quite overwhelmed with the magnitude of this task and I hope someone here can help!

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello!

Maybe 30 minutes "hour" for hospital and 50 minutes "hour" for school, so a FET "hour" would be 10 minutes, and change the activities' duration (but each activity needs a fixed duration). Can you neglect the 5 minutes break?

[dsvilko]

Thanks for the extremely fast reply!
Ok, I think I know what you are getting at but I am so new to all this that I don't know if would that work.
So, hospital activities would have 3-'hour' duration, and at school 5-'hour' durations? The same activity could still be scheduled at two consecutive slots?
We also have two 15min breaks (breakfast/dinner), luckily outside the allocated hospital time so I am guessing that is not a problem?
Thanks once again!

[dsvilko]

I have thought of one other possible problem.
If we have hours defined like this:

Code Select Expand


1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13
| 1.hour| | 2.hour| ...

what's stopping FET to schedule one activity at 3-7, not starting at '1' or '6'?

[Liviu Lalescu]

So, hospital activities would have 3-'hour' duration, and at school 5-'hour' durations? The same activity could still be scheduled at two consecutive slots?
We also have two 15min breaks (breakfast/dinner), luckily outside the allocated hospital time so I am guessing that is not a problem?

Each activity needs to have an exact duration and it will span across more FET hours.

I have thought of one other possible problem.
If we have hours defined like this:

Code Select Expand


1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13
| 1.hour| | 2.hour| ...

what's stopping FET to schedule one activity at 3-7, not starting at '1' or '6'?

You can add a constraint activities preferred starting times, for all activities.

[dsvilko]

Ok, thank you. As this is my first time using FET, I'll first try to build only the school timetable, ignoring the hospital for now. Once I get more comfortable with the terminology and the interface, I'll try to implement your idea.

[spike]

Hi Liviu!
I have a similar situation and I am new to your software. I apologize if my question has already been answered, but I didn't find it.
In our school we have decided that three group of classes (B,E,F - I mean 1B,2B,3B,1E,2E,3E,1F,2F,3F) will start at 07.55, while the remaining four (A,C,D,G) will start at 08.05.
It is pretty sure that some Teachers are going to be part of Classes B and D for example. In this scenario, how could I solve the different starting time to properly instruct the software?
Thank you for taking time to reply!

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello, spike,

I think you could solve this problem with making a real-life hour = 6 FET hours, and a FET hour = 10 real-life minutes. The activities will have duration 6 or 5.

If you have last years' timetables or other documents, you may send them (here or by email to me).

[spike]

Thank you Liviu, for your reply!
As I am a newbie I do not understand your answer,
but I am attaching our timetable, so that I can better
explain what I meant when I said that some teachers
may be involved in course B, for example, and D with
different starting and ending periods.
Thank you in advance

[Liviu Lalescu]

You're welcome!

Maybe like in the attached file.

[spike]

Thank you so much!
I will work on it