FET with five terms / for Finland (Five 7 weeks terms in a school year)

[mathmake]

Hi Liviu,

I've made few versions of timetables for our school with FET now. They are getting better and better. FET runs extremely nice despite a great number of constraints we have.

There is only one tiny problem that I'm trying to fix. Activities are divided a bit unevenly to the terms for some teachers. There might be a term of 9 hours in a week and another term having 18 hours in a week for couble of teachers.

The solution I'm trying now is to add the min hours daily for some teachers. Is there any other way to divide activities evenly between terms and at the same time respect the term structure we would like to have? Would spreading activities evenly over the week constraint do the job or would it brake term constraints you've made to mathmake custom version?

Markus

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello, Markus,

I would like to see your file (send me a locked file, data_and_timetable.fet, and tell me which teachers are problematic and how). And send also the unlocked file.

If I understood correctly, you say that for example teacher T has 9 activities in the first 5 FET days and 18 activities in the next 5 days. Maybe this can be solved by constraints activities occupy min/max time slots from selection, if you add 5 constraints for each teacher and in each constraint you add the activities of that teacher and select a term. The occupy min constraint has a setting - allow empty slots - how should it be? But I would like to see your file for making sure.

If I understood correctly, the constraints you are proposing are not adequate.

[mathmake]

Hi Liviu,

you understood it right!

I guess your suggestion is working! I think that constraint min activities in a set of time slots would be enough.

Thank you again for your help! I'm runnig FET right now. I'll send you files you asked after it has solved the current timetable in case your solution would not work for some reason. But I think it will do the trick.

Markus

[Liviu Lalescu]

You are welcome! 

OK, inform me either of success or of failure.

PS: I updated my post above, one of my comments was incorrect. The allow empty slots is for another constraint, activities min simultaneous in selected time slots.

[mikkojoo]

Hello!

We have 1941 activities in our timetable and making all the constraints just now.

I have one noob-question again: is it possible to import activities again from a csv-file, writing them over the old ones? For example, I noticed that some things would be much easier with activity tags. But if I import activities from csv,  it adds those activities, not  writing them over the old ones.

Or can I just (how?) just delete  all activities ad import again?

I have all the data in those csv-files, but the constraints ar only in my fet-file, if I understand it rigth?

[Volker Dirr]

If you delete all activities, then most constraints will stay (like teacher, students and room constraints), but all constraints about activities will be removed.
maybe just delete all activities and check the constraints list to see if that is critical in your dataset or not.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Volker, you forgot to say that to remove all the activities mikkojoo can go to Activity planning and Delete all, or in the activities dialog just press Enter on Remove and keep it pressed.

[mikkojoo]

Thanks to both of you!

[mikkojoo]

I'm getting on.

Now I have few problems:

- how do I force as many teachers as possible to have an activity on Wed 1st hour? We have a teacher meeting before that, so I would like as many as possible teacher not to have gap after meeting.

[Liviu Lalescu]

I think you can use the magic constraint activities min simultaneous in selected time slots, with a progressive approach. All activities, selected slot = Wed 1st, min simultaneous = x, where you find x by a progressive approach.

Please read that constraints' help, and also read the help for constraints activities max simultaneous in selected time slots, and activities occupy min/max time slots from selection.

With the constraint activities occupy min time slots from selection you can ensure that a certain teacher has an activity on Wed 1st.

Please let me know.

[mikkojoo]

Thanks, I'll try that!

Another:
- we have three kind of activities containing Sports:
-- actual Sports-lessons
-- two types of optional activities, where a student can have also Sports

So, I would like to be able to avoid those sporty activities to be on same day
All those activities have an activity tag (for room reservations) if that could be helpful with this?

[Liviu Lalescu]

Either add a constraint min 1 days between activities for all such activities of a student, or use student max hours daily with an activity tag. The first is preferable.

[mikkojoo]

Thanks, worked perfectly.
I have to say, that I was impressed from the beginning. But still, it's quite amazing how fine FET solves the problems one by one.

I have been making timetables since 1998, first magnetic board, then Finnish timetableing software Kurre (without any optimisation) and Kissi. Then, for couple of years I have been using Untis, which has been used in my present school since 80'.

But FET is the most straigth forward and efficient tool for this. I feel I have learned really much in only few days and I want to thank you Liviu, Volker and also Mathmake (because I found this program bacause of his 5-term work).

[Liviu Lalescu]

Thank you for your nice words! 

Yes, FET was created with suggestions by users, for users, step by step.

[mikkojoo]

If I understood correctly, you say that for example teacher T has 9 activities in the first 5 FET days and 18 activities in the next 5 days. Maybe this can be solved by constraints activities occupy min/max time slots from selection, if you add 5 constraints for each teacher and in each constraint you add the activities of that teacher and select a term. The occupy min constraint has a setting - allow empty slots - how should it be? But I would like to see your file for making sure.

If I understood correctly, the constraints you are proposing are not adequate.

I'm now in this same  situation. I can't use "Min hours daily for all teachers" bacause we have few teachers teaching only few hours (one  activity a day is okay).

I don't understand quoted thing above. What constraint are you talking about?