Hello all.

I've been wondering if there are known solutions for algorithm of creating a school timetable. Basically, it's about optimizing "hour-dispersion" (both in teachers and classes case) for given class-subject-teacher associations. We can assume that we have sets of classes, lesson subjects and teachers associated with each other at the input and that timetable should fit between 8AM and 4PM.

I guess that there is probably no accurate algorithm for that, but maybe someone knows a good approximation or hints for developing it.

P.S. I know, there was http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1259686/school-timetable-generation-algorithm-closed , but unlike in that case, I'm not looking for actual implementation, rather for thoughts on how to do it or why it's impossible.