The Timetable Challenge!

Ste_Wilson

So...I've always thought timetabling was a 3-dimensional problem, but if only I had access to a 3d modelling package.....but then I thought...I can use the engineering drawings to generate timetables, for staff, for groups....exciting times...

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/5440d5108491454e2102b956/w/fe44a909d40048c91e2e1488/e/a05f394186fd51bd06d4c9ea

It's just a bit of a pain to edit at the moment..

I've colour coded by staff member and it works surprisingly well to spot conflicts and see who's doing what when, but....
I have a feeling it COULD BE BETTER......

Can it be improved?  Can we use custom fields in properties to add teacher names, classrooms, subjects?

Calling any big brains out there to help make timetabling painless and beautiful!

MichaelPascoe

This is pretty neat.

3D graphs would be cool in Onshape!

chadstoltzfus

I would have to spend some time coming up with ideas but I think it would be pretty simple to make a configurable part studio with custom features as a backbone and make a "3D Graph System" in Onshape.

Ste_Wilson

Thanks for having a look peoples

Just updated the drawing slightly to make clearer what I'm aiming for, so I inserted all the parts of a certain colour into an assembly and that's one teacher's timetable, but obviously, if the timetable gets shuffled and a time slot changes teacher that has to be a manual change to the assembly to update the drawing.  I have also done a class time table, picking the parts out from the main part studio to add to the assembly.  Could this be automatically...all blocks tagged with class one appear in assembly one?  Ideally, information about each time slot could be attached to a time slot and displayed on the drawing as well.

I'm also aware that this isn't really what Onshpe is for

chadstoltzfus

You could create a custom feature that allows you to tag parts with a name (could also add the ability to color those parts) and then have a custom feature you run at the end of your Part Studio that would grab all parts with that name and create a composite part of those parts. Then have your assembly reference that composite part and you should never have to insert or delete parts in that assembly again, it would all be driven by the tags you give those parts.

Ste_Wilson

You say 'you could'....I'm just doing the configuration tutorials! Still having a bit of a tinker.

chadstoltzfus

For someone just doing the tutorials you've created a very impressive framework here. If you ever want to collaborate on building this out with some custom features feel free to reach out.