FET 5.10.2

FET version 5 is released. You are encouraged to use it, because of the new much better algorithm. The new 5 series version seems to be very performant. It might be comparable to expensive timetabling software. The solution is usually obtained in maximum 5-20 minutes.

Major Features:

1. FET is free software (open source). You can freely use, copy, modify and re-distribute it, as GNU/GPL permits (but please consider a donation)
2. Localized to en_GB (English), ar (Arabic), ca (Catalan), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa (Persian), fr (French), hu (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian) and tr (Turkish) (maybe incompletely)
3. Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also semi-automatic or manual allocation
4. Platform independent implementation, allowing running on GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports
5. Powerful flexible modular xml format for the input file, allowing editing with an xml editor or by hand (besides FET)
6. Possibility to view the currently generated timetable without stopping the ongoing simulation (as html on hard disk)
7. The resulted timetables are exported into xml and html formats
8. Very flexible students (pupils) structure, organized into sets: years, groups and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students (as separate sets)
9. Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0% (some special constraints can have only 100% weight percentage possible)
10. Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60 (can be increased, but until now nobody suggested a larger value)
11. Maximum number of working days per week: 28 (can be increased, but until now nobody suggested a larger value)
12. Maximum total number of teachers: 700 (can be increased, but until now nobody suggested a larger value)
13. Maximum total number of sets of students: 15000 (can be increased, but until now nobody suggested a larger value)
14. Maximum total number of subjects: 1000 (can be increased, but until now nobody suggested a larger value)
15. Virtually unlimited number of subject tags
16. Maximum number of activities: 5000 (can be increased, but until now nobody suggested a larger value)
17. Maximum number of rooms: 1000 (can be increased, but until now nobody suggested a larger value)
18. Maximum number of buildings: 100 (can be increased, but until now nobody suggested a larger value)
19. Adjustable duration for each activity (each activity can have duration of 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours or more)
20. Possibility of adding multiple teachers and students sets for each activity. That is, each activity can have specified any number of students subgroups (sets) and any number of teachers (it is possible to have no teacher or no students set for an activity, also)
21. Maximum number of time constraints: 10000 (can be increased, but until now nobody suggested a larger value)
22. Maximum number of space constraints: 10000 (can be increased, but until now nobody suggested a larger value)
23. A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
    • Constraint basic compulsory time
    • Constraint students (set) early max beginnings at second hour
    • Constraint students (set) max gaps per week
    • Constraint min n days between activities (to allow balancing the activities in a week)
    • Constraint activity preferred time (to specify for an activity a preferred day, hour or both)
    • Constraint activity preferred times
    • Constraint activities preferred times (you can specify a set of activities by teacher, subject, subject tag or students and a set of preferred or allowed periods).
    • Constraint break
    • Constraint students (set) max (min) hours daily
    • Constraint teacher(s) max (min) hours daily
    • Constraint students set not available
    • Constraint teacher max days per week
    • Constraint teacher not available
    • Constraint teachers max gaps per week
    • Constraint activities same starting hour
    • Constraint activities same starting time
    • Constraint activities not overlapping
    • Constraint min gaps between activities
    • Constraint 2 activities consecutive
    • Constraint 2 activities grouped
    • Constraint 2 activities ordered
    • Constraint activity(ies) ends students day
    • Constraint teachers max gaps per day
    • Constraint teacher(s) max hours continuously
    • Constraint students (set) max hours continuously
    • Constraint teacher(s) hourly interval max days per week
    • Constraint students (set) hourly interval max days per week
24. A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
    • Constraint basic compulsory space
    • Constraint room not available
    • Constraint activity preferred room(s)
    • Constraint subject preferred room(s)
    • Constraint subject subject tag preferred room(s)
    • Constraints to control building changes for students and teachers (min gaps between building changes, max building changes per day, max building changes per week)

Enhancements:

• Speed improvement if user has constraints activities same starting time, 2 activities consecutive and 2 activities ordered and activities not overlapping (idea and partial code by Volker Dirr). In some cases, the speed improvement is very high. This has to do with the initial ordering of the activities.
• Other minor speed improvements (idea and partial code by Volker Dirr).
• Added a Persian manual by Hamed SadeghiNeshat.