Constraint recipe
Workshop capacity is about how many students can work at once, not only whether the room appears free. Ten students with six benches means four cannot work safely. Split the group, rotate stations across weeks, or shorten simultaneous demand before you treat the result as a generator quality issue.
Key takeaways
- Count stations, benches, bays, or machines, not only room availability.
- Practical sessions often need longer blocks to be worthwhile.
- Rotations help when one room cannot host the whole cohort at once.
- Shared workshops need clash checks across the whole site.
Why capacity is not the same as a free room
A room slot can be empty in the grid while the session is still impossible. If each student needs a bench, machine, or bay, the station count is the real limit.
Vocational schools often solve this with half-class groups, rotation weeks, or longer blocks that match setup and cleanup time.
What capacity competes with
Rotations need spare teachers, duplicate kits, or careful sequencing. They can also fight subject spread and cleanup time between sessions.
The workshop and lab guide covers rotation patterns and shared facilities.
What to do next
- List each workshop and how many simultaneous workstations it has.
- Map each practical activity to the equipment each student needs.
- Compare group sizes with station count for every planned session.
- Split or rotate groups that exceed capacity.
- Reserve enough adjacent periods for setup, work, and cleanup.
- Check whether two cohorts need the same facility at the same time.
Common mistakes
- Scheduling a full class into a room with half the needed stations
- Using single periods for practical work that needs setup time
- Letting two groups share one machine at the same time
Quick answers
Is workshop capacity a hard constraint?
If the session cannot run safely without enough stations, yes. Some rotation plans can stay as preferences.
What if the room is free but equipment is not?
Treat equipment as its own capacity limit. A free room does not make an unsafe placement valid.