Can FET handle overlapping time slots

[amario78]

Hello, at our university we have time slots that are overlapping.  For example, one block of available times on our schedule is 8-9, 9-10, 10-11, etc.  Another block of times available is 8:30-10, 10:30-12, 12:30-2, etc.

Can FET handle this?  If a professor is teaching from 9-10, then we want to make sure that he or she is not scheduled in the 8:30-10 or the 10:30-12 block.

Thanks!

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello,

First of all, I do not understand completely your example. If the professor is teaching from 9-10, why can't he teach from 10:30-12? But if this is required, it can be done.

How do you intend to add the hours? The first block, then the second block? How about the teachers' or students' gaps? Are they important to be minimized? We cannot manage them correctly in this way.

There is a constraint, activities occupy max time slots from selection. You can add all the activities of the teacher, select only the 2 slots 8-9 and 8:30-10 from a single day, and let max occupied = 1. A lot of constraints to add, which is not hard for FET, but for the user it is.

So, another possibility is to create a custom version, taking into consideration automatically these constraints. It might work even faster, because the code will be more optimized.

Other thoughts: you might consider a FET "hour" = real 30 minutes. Activities from 8-9 will  have duration 2 and from 8:30-10 duration 3. But this might not be what you want. Maybe you could show an example of your timetable.

[amario78]

Liviu, thanks so much for the quick reply.  I very much appreciate it.

I made an error in my original post.   It should say
"If a professor is teaching from 9-10, then we want to make sure he or she is not scheduled in the 8:30-10 block."

Thanks for your suggestions on adding a constraint 'Activities occuply max times slots from selection'.  I will try that to get around this problem.

Thanks again, and regards.

And by the way, FET is a great software!

[Liviu Lalescu]

Liviu, thanks so much for the quick reply.  I very much appreciate it.

I made an error in my original post.   It should say
"If a professor is teaching from 9-10, then we want to make sure he or she is not scheduled in the 8:30-10 block."

Thanks for your suggestions on adding a constraint 'Activities occuply max times slots from selection'.  I will try that to get around this problem.

Thanks again, and regards.

And by the way, FET is a great software!

Thanks for the appreciation!