Cycling timetables is here a special setting where the users want to create timetables for a number of days (n) that is larger than the days in a school week, but n is not normally a multiple of the days in a school week. This selection generates an extra set of n weeks (in Weeks view) where each of these n days appear in turn so that each of them appears as often as any other. Mimosa enables you to use n=31 (maximum), but in most applications this number is much smaller.
The reason behind using the cycling timetables is that there are too many courses to fit in a single weekly timetable to be repeated over the school year. This same result can be achieved in different methods of Mimosa (in Weeks window), but using cycling timetables enables to use same daily timetables over again, which reduces the timetabling effort.
Before you start, activate the Weeks window so that you can better see how this selection creates the needed weeks and timetables.
Suppose you have five (5) days in a week and you want to create 9 days (possibly different days) which you want to use in turns. You create the timetables for the first two weeks, days 1-5 for the first week (Monday-Friday), and days 6-9 for the second week (Monday-Thursday). In Options|Limits, you have to set the number of weeks to 2 before and allocate the lectures to two weeks.
When you have given the number of cycles (n) and ensured that you have first created the model for the n timetables in the first week(s), Mimosa prompts you to confirm the given input and finally displays a map of the timetables across weeks, like below. The first weeks are used to store the results.
Click [Remove] button to remove special days from the list without disturbing the intended cycle and [Copy] to copy this list onto the Clipboard.
When the process is completed, you can also to select View|Graphics plus View|Timetabled lectures in Weeks window to view the resulting timetables in graphic outlook.
Note that in Weeks window, you can copy the timetable form any day to another week and to the same or different day. Click first the week which you want to use as the source week and select Edit|Copy week. Click next the destination week and select Edit|Paste week Special|Single day of week. Finally you select the source and destination day of week to start copying.