Optimizing the room usage for students
The software allows you to input several constraints to improve the usage of the rooms, depending on what is important to you:
1. If certain room is better for specific subject:
At least one lesson per week has to be in certain classroom
2. If certain room is not very good, but due to capacity you still have to use it, here is how to minimize the usage:
Lesson can be only once per week in certain classroom
3. If the lesson can be in several rooms, but you want the class to use the same room on all lessons per week:
We have 3 lessons per week and they shall be in the same classroom
What is important is that during the input always try to specify all the available classrooms to each lesson. If Music lesson can be in special MusicRoom or in Homeclassroom, input both, not just MusicRoom. The software is not allowed to put the lessons outside of the options you specify so if at least one music lesson needs to be in homeclassroom, it will have problem to generate the timetable.
Once you have some timetable generated you can explain to the software which rooms are better/worse either by the above constraints or simply by removing the room from the list of available rooms for certain lesson. But you will know you are on a good path.
Notes:
- If you are generating with relaxation, then you may consider adding the above cardrelaxations with lower priority. You may even add two cardrelationships. One that says at least one lesson in better room, second that at least 2 lessons in better room. And specify this 2 is low importance.
See also:
Reducing the room usage