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DUCE, Harry - VLE - University of Leeds

1. shiftsFile file ReliefOpp WorkPiece Shift id int id int id int readTrainsFile void arrTime int startRO ReliefOpp workPieces WorkPiece List readShiftsFile void depTime int endRO ReliefOpp nSpell int testPrint void unitCode int coverCount int spellList 2D List of ReliefOpp location int choiceShifts Shift List cost int wpStarted WorkPiece shiftTpe int depot int minusCover void addCover void hasWP wp WorkPiece bool maxGainShiftChoice Shift selected void deSelected void isRedundant bool nUncovered int Schedule shiftList Shift List addShift s Shift void rm redundantShifts void printSchedule void Figure 7 Class Diagram detailing the class structure of GreedyHeuristics 2 4 3 Critique Evaluating GreedyHeuristics led to the following conclusions Pros e Reads in and stores the raw data from the files as sensible property values e Creates useful objects that represent important components of a train crew schedule e g ROs WPs and shifts These objects have the potential to be used for further functionality and not just generating a train crew schedule in the form of a list of shifts Cons e The output presents a small fraction of the information that is being processed within the program For a user to gather further information on the schedule produced they would
2. 3 3 3 was split into two stages 1 Retrieving and storing the ReliefOpp and WorkPiece objects that correspond to the visual component selected by the user 2 Creating a new window that will display the data values of the retrieved ReliefOpp object and its corresponding WorkPiece object if one exists 4 3 1 1 Retrieving the selected ReliefOpp and WorkPiece object The ListBox class has a property called Selected tem that retrieves the users currently selected item An event called SelectionChanged is triggered when a new item of the ListBox is selected by the user Microsoft c2015 Selector SelectionChanged Event A method within the VehicleBlock UserControl class called OpenReliefOppDialog handles the SelectionChanged event for the reliefOppListBox within which a new ReliefOpp object is initialised and assigned the value of the SelectedItem property A WorkPiece object is initialised and assigned its value from the retrieved ReliefOpp object s workpieceStarted property if it does not equal null Hence retrieving and storing the ReliefOpp and WorkPiece objects that correspond to the visual component selected by the user 4 3 1 2 Window Displaying Retrieved RO Data The purpose of the window class called ReliefOppDisplay is to provide a quick way of viewing the specific data values of RO and WP components within the train crew schedule 98 The window is small and displays the data values in a simple compact grid format so to n
3. Integer value representing the start time of the WS in minutes e endTime Integer value representing the end time of the WS in minutes e WworkSpellCost Double value representing the cost of the WS in terms of minutes This also represents the duration of the WS e parentShift A Shift object that represents the shift that the WS is a part of in the data set The CreateWorkSpellList method is called once the crew scheduling algorithm has finished populating the Schedule objects list of Shift objects property The process used to initialise and populate WorkSpell objects is as follows 1 An outer for loop iterates over the number of Shift objects contained in the Schedule objects list of Shift objects property which is retrieved using the Count method 2 Count value from the outer loop is used to access each Shift from the Schedule objects list of Shift objects to retrieve the numberOfWorkSpellsInShift integer property value 3 Aninner for loop then iterates over the numberOfWorkSpellsInShift value WorkSpell objects are initialised within the inner loop The values passed as parameters to the constructor are id startReliefOppld vehicleBlock endTime workSpellCost and parentShift 5 Each WorkSpell object is then added to a list To be able to pass collections of WorkSpell objects into a ListBox using a similar method to the one used for ReliefOpp objects the list of all WorkSpell objects was ordered based on the value of thei
4. VehicleBlock objects were initialised within Collecting the ReliefOpp objects appropriately was achieved as follows 1 Aninteger variable called skipValue was initialised to 0 This value was used to store the amount of ReliefOpp objects that had been passed into the previous VehicleBlock objects reliefOppListBox s ItemsSource property 2 A for loop iterates over the number of vehicle blocks using a counter i which represented the vehicle block that was being defined from the data a skipValue was used to skip along the indexes of the list of all ReliefOpp objects to the point at which they had been passed from into the last ItemsSource skipValue 0 for first iteration b The integer value returned from lastReliefOpportunityOnVeh i skip Value was used to take that many ReliefOpp objects starting from the index that was reached in step a and pass it through to the temsSource c skipValue was then updated with the value of lastHeliefOpportunityOn Veh i and the loop started again lastReliefOpportunityOnVeh List of integers that represent the ID value of the last RO of each vehicle block within the data files pc Figure 21 Screen cap of application displaying ROs and WPs components of each vehicle block from the DS1 data set 4 2 1 4 Displaying Shifts The cell defined by the first row and second column of the VehicleBlock class s Grid container is where the visual shifts are to be displayed The initial
5. a ListBox container that uses a grid format to display each shifts ID number of WSs cost type and depot properties The user selects a shift and presses an Add Shift To Schedule button The Shift object is passed to the MainWindow where it is added to the Schedule objects shiftList The process of re drawing the visual schedule is the same as described in section 4 4 3 1 by re creating all WorkSpell objects and all VehicleBlock UserControls This method worked when using the sample data set DS1 however when the larger data set DS2 was used the application would crash whilst trying to load the list of 70 000 Shift objects into the ListBox Therefore a new method had to be devised that would reduce the amount of Shift objects being passed into the list at once Each WorkPiece object had a property called choiceShifts which is a populated list of Shift objects that supply cover to the WP The concept was to allow the user to add a shift to a specific WP This would cut down the number of candidate shifts needed to be displayed to the user at once It is also sensible because if the user is not looking to add a specific shift but instead add cover to a specific WP then this solution would let them do that exactly that The concept was implemented using the following process 1 A button was added to the RO and WP property values window Section 4 3 1 Figure 26 called addShiftButton that is only enabled if the WorkPiec
6. a Trains object The string is called fileName and is used to initialised a new StreamReader object The StreamReader object creates a stream from the file specified by the string value and reads all the values into a list of integers This is achieved by the following process Splitting the entire file wherever there is a single piece of whitespace Remove all the empty entries created from the previous step Store all of the left over values to a list of strings e O N gt Select every value within the list of strings and convert them into 32 bit signed integers 5 Store the integer values to a list of integers The integer values within the list are stored into local properties by following the format of the Trains file outlined in section 2 3 1 The ReadFromFile method returns a call to the constructor of the Trains class file passing the local variables as parameters The constructor assigns the parameters to the corresponding property of the Trains class Hence initialising an object that contains the relevant raw data values from the specified trains file 4 1 2 1 2 Shifts Class The Shifts class is similar in structure to the Trains class described above It has a static method called ReadFromFile that takes the shifts file name as a parameter however it also takes an integer value numberOfShifts that has come from the trains file Shift files follow the format in which each line describes a separate shift therefore reading
7. approach was to 1 Create a single ListBox 2 Boundits temsSource to a collection of Shift objects that would be a subset of the Schedule objects list of Shift objects 3 Use the properties of each Shift object to define the width and X axis position of the visual representation along with the converter files Whilst implementing this approach it became apparent that it would not work due to a single Shift object covering potentially multiple vehicle blocks This is because a shift is split into WSs The solution to this was to implement a new class type called WorkSpell that would make it possible to split Shift objects into visually presentable objects For the purposes of saving memory WorkSpell objects are only created for Shift objects that are present in the Schedule objects list of shifts not for every Shift object stored in the running applications data Therefore the initialisation of all WorkSpell objects takes place in a method of the Schedule class called CreateWorkSpellList which then collects all the objects into a list of WorkSpell objects that is a property of the Schedule class The initial property values of the WS are as follows e id Defines the identification value of the WorkSpell object e SstartReliefOppld Integer value representing the identification value of the RO that the WS starts at in the schedule e vehicleBlock Integer value representing the vehicle block that the WS covers 34 e startTime
8. belongs to the selected shift an easier process e Give the user the option to view the shifts contained in the current train crew schedule as a list containing their property values Also allowing them to select a shift in the visual schedule by selecting it from the list of property values Whilst observing the user evaluation it became clear that when the user wanted to find a shift based on a particular property value e g its ID or depot it was a tedious process of selecting each WS component until finding the correct one This list would enable the user to find a shift within the schedule from its ID value along with other property values too e Instead of having two separate buttons that allows the user to swap between viewing all vehicle blocks and vehicle blocks just for a selected shift a single ToggleButton is used described in section 4 5 1 It became clear during the user evaluation that having two buttons to perform the process of switching between viewing a collection of vehicle blocks and the entire schedule was a pointless waste of screen space due to the buttons never being enabled at the same time as each other 4 5 Iteration 5 4 5 14 Implementing the ToggleButton A WPF ToggleButton has two states Checked and UnChecked It swaps between these states when it is clicked by the user and the default position is Unchecked This enables the button to have two different event handlers for when it is clicked on one for when it
9. better visual feedback when selecting a work shift Make the window resize better An undo button Zoom function When view shift is selected show which shift is enabled Double clicking on a shift should view that shift Some sort of toggle button to swap between viewing shift and schedule m Appendix E Proof of Version Control System Due to me not supplying the repository for my software application have provided proof that the version control system that was chosen Discussed in section 3 4 3 was used throughout the project in the form of screen caps of the commits made Explorer History Branches Pull Requests FinalYearPre FinalYearProject commits Commits Branch Updates 57658d by Harry Duce harry duceGhotmail com 15 03 2015 9 Added unit UserControl Added Grid to Main Window 1eb52 by Harry ice harry du otmail com 11 March 2015 Only one Node object now removed other pointless objects Bp 2 y Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmailcom gt 11 03 2 05 March 2015 9 included some comments and experimented with making lines selectable Harry Duce harry duceGhotmailcom 05 03 2015 ON create Blue and Green node objects and lines Also Made new WPF Window which iu 362150 rry Duce harry duceGhotmail com 05 03 2015 04 March 2015 Jmm Further ported the algorithm over 089976 by Harry Duce lt harry 03 March 2015 9 Atemating commit again Bffa
10. by the difference in vehicle blocks between data sets to get the number of blocks added per WP 44 8 265 0 188 Due to the visual blocks of both solutions being around the same size in terms of screen space it is clear that this solution scales better when displaying data sets of increasing sizes d Itis impossible to obtain the following properties of each train crew schedule component in Iqbal s solution i RO Location and Train Unit ID ii Shift Type and Depot 55 These are all important properties for each component e g without the Train Unit ID value of a RO a train planner cannot determine which vehicle a crew will work on All of these properties are available in this projects solution by selecting the corresponding component in the visual train crew schedule Every property value displayed in Iqbal s project is accessible within this projects application Therefore in terms of data made available to the user this project outperforms Iqbal s e Iqbal s visual train unit schedule displays RO components by their ID value which makes the process of referring to a RO by its ID value in the schedule an easy process of observation Finding a RO by its ID value in the solution for this project requires the user to select visual RO components within the schedule until they navigate to the correct one Therefore in terms of navigating to a specific RO based on its ID value Iqbal s solution outperforms this solution f To av
11. each WP are displayed at the start and end of the X axis respectively The WP charts all start from the same horizontal position and due to their varying widths do not all end at the same horizontal position The purpose of this visual display is to give an indication of the length of time of each WP within the data Iqbal 2014 p33 5 1 2 53 Within the window that displays the schedule in terms of train units the user can add shifts to the crew schedule Iqbal 2014 p26 p27 To add a shift the user performs the following steps a Selects a WP from a drop down list that displays them by their ID value b Selects a shift that offers cover to the selected WP from a list of shift ID values that is generated and displayed once the WP ID is selected The shifts that are already contained within the train crew schedule are not listed Iqbal 2014 p26 p27 Within the window that displays the schedule in terms of train units the user can delete shifts from the train crew schedule Iqbal 2014 p31 To delete a shift the user performs the following steps a Selects a WP from a drop down list that displays each WP by its ID value b Selects a shift from a list of shift ID values that represent the shifts that are within the train crew schedule The user can save the train crew schedule to a file in terms of shifts and their property values Iqbal 2014 p33 34 The user can save a printed copy of the visual train crew schedule Iqbal 2
12. folder that contains all the necessary property and library files The folder also contains an empty MainWindow xaml file and its corresponding interaction logic file MainWindow xaml cs MainWindow is set as the first object to be initialised when the application is executed The project folder was then populated with empty class files that were named based on the structure designed in section 3 2 4 1 2 Initial Data Handling As stated in 2 4 1 the GreedyHeuristics program can be used as a starter template for handling the data contained within the Trains and Shifts files Therefore the development performed in this iteration mainly consisted of manually porting specific parts of the Python program over to C Modifications were made where thought necessary some of which have already been defined in the design section to make the handled data more suitable to the design of this solution A detailed explanation is also given due to the importance of having a good understanding of how the data is handled The set of data used to test the data handling process was a small sample set called DS1 25 DS1 Relief Opportunities 25 Work Pieces Vehicle Blocks Candidate Shifts Figure 17 Table displaying number of train crew schedule components within DS1 4 1 2 1 Reading in the data files 4 1 2 1 1 Trains Class The Trains class contains a static method called ReadFromFile that takes a single string parameter argument and returns
13. have a better understanding of those components 45 Two labels were added to the top of the main window their content being the total number of shifts in the current train crew schedule and the total cost of all shifts in the current train crew schedule With these labels and the ability to repeatedly generate new train crew schedules it is possible to analyse the scheduling algorithm being used by averaging the total cost of the crew schedule that the algorithm produces The train planner is also able to repeatedly generate train crew schedules to try to create the cheapest possible The process of generating new train crew schedules is as follows 1 The process is instigated when the user clicks the CreateCrewScheduleButton button from within the main window The Schedule objects shiftList property is cleared of all its items The algorithm that generates a train crew schedule is called and populates shiftList with Shift objects 4 The Schedule objects CreateWorkSpellList method is called that populates the 3 dimensional list with WorkSpell objects from the Shift objects within shiftList 5 The visual schedule is re drawn using the newly populated 3 dimeonsional list of WorkSpell objects Hence generating a new train crew schedule to be displayed 4 4 4 Iteration 4 User Evaluation In order to ensure the quality of the solution a user evaluation was performed towards the end of iteration 4 whilst there was still time to implement i
14. hotmail com gt 23 04 2015 21 April 2015 Unselected now works for reliefOpps Mid Ae by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmail com gt 21 04 2015 20 April 2015 IR Cleaned up constructors added more data too relief opp dialog 1508f9 by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmail com gt 20 04 2015 Misg Added random colours to shifts Created relief info dialogs db0210 by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmail com gt 20 04 2015 FinalYearProject FinalYearProject commits Commits Branch Updates Path 31 May 2015 Final Commit Slightly changed position of RO components 90b292 by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmail com gt 31 05 2015 Displays start and end times of work spells Comments Added Final Commit 5741f1 by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmail com gt 31 05 2015 e D I Deleted ConsoleApplication1 ca4eab by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmail com gt 31 05 2015 27 May 2015 ME Can now list all shifts in the current crew schedule Mi de6te3 by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmail com gt 27 05 2015 25 May 2015 Ip Added save schedule button and method Reads correct shifts to file however ae75cf by Harry Duce harry duceG hotmail com 25 05 2015 HD Changed PrepData to PrepareData Formated and added labels to w 58112d by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmail com gt 25 05 2015 15 May 2015
15. in a shifts file is achieved by the following process 1 StreamReader object is initialised using the file name 26 For loop iterates over the range of the numberOfShifts value po StreamReaders ReadLine method is used to read one line of the file per every iteration The line of data is split wherever there is a single piece of whitespace All empty entries created in previous step are removed Values left are stored into a list of strings Each string value is converted to an integer and is stored into a list of integers o Jo pm P List of integers is added to a list of list of integers The ReadFromFile method then returns a call to the constructor of the Shifts class file passing the list of list of integers as the only parameter The constructor then copies the parameter to the only property of the Shifts class allShifts Hence initialising an object that contains the raw data for every shift available for the schedule 4 1 2 1 3 RawData Class The RawData class has two uninitialized properties a Trains object and a Shifts object Its constructor takes two strings as input trainsFilePath and shiftsFilePath and initialises both the Trains and Shifts object properties by passing the strings as parameters respectively It also passes the value that represents the number of shifts from the trains file to the Shifts constructor The RawData object is initialised within the MainWindow At this point the file names for
16. means it is sensible to consider multiple options CENTERS for MEDICARE amp MEDICAID SERVICES 2008 p1 1 5 1 Waterfall This method divides the project into sequential stages 1 Background investigation and requirements definition 2 System design 3 Design implementation 4 Testing and maintenance There is little scope for moving backwards through the process and if a stage is conducted inadequately the subsequent activities will have to accommodate the deficiencies Consequently the Waterfall method is most suitable to longer term projects that have the 4 capacity and flexibility to make provision for full completion of each stage prior to commencing the next Maheshwari and Jain 2012 p286 1 5 2 Prototyping A methodology that promotes user involvement by dividing a project into segments where prototypes are created and presented to them This enables frequent user feedback so that the solution being created constantly adheres to the customer needs If there is little interaction with the user then the benefits of this methodology are not taken full advantage of Maheshwari and Jain 2012 p287 1 5 3 Iterative Waterfall Development This was created with the purpose of being a faster and more flexible version of the Waterfall model splitting the software development into incremental stages which are performed in iterations Each iteration receives feedback from the previous stage to improve and add functionality to
17. system windows controls control 28v vs 110 29 aspx Last accessed 28th May 2015 Microsoft c2015 Data Binding Overview Available https msdn microsoft com en us library ms7523479628vzvs 1109629 aspx Last accessed 29th May 2015 Microsoft c2015 Introduction to WPF Available https msdn microsoft com en us library aa9702689628v vs 1 109629 aspx Last accessed 25th May 2015 Microsoft C2015 temsControl ItemsPanel Property Available https msdn microsoft com en us library system windows controls itemscontrol itemspanel v2vs 110 aspx Last accessed 25th May 2015 Microsoft c2015 temsControl Item Template Property Available https msdn microsoft com en us library system windows controls itemscontrol itemtemplate v vs 110 aspx Last accessed 25th May 2015 Microsoft C2015 ValueConverter Interface Available https msdn microsoft com en us library system windows data ivalueconverter 28v vs 110 29 aspx Last accessed 30th May 2015 2622 Microsoft c2015 ListBox Class Available https msdn microsoft com en us library system windows controls listbox 28v vs 110 29 aspx Last accessed 25th May 2015 Microsoft c2015 Rectangle Class Available https msdn microsoft com en us library system windows shapes rectangle v vs 110 aspx Last accessed 25th May 2015 Microsoft C2015 SaveFileDialog Class Available https msdn microsoft com en us library system windows forms savefiledialog96
18. the SelectedShift through as a parameter argument The method then removes the SelectedShift from its shiftList property The list that contains all the shifts that are in the train crew schedule 2 Then a method is called on the SelectedShift object that reduces the cover count of each WorkPiece object that it is cross referenced with 3 Then the CreateWorkSpellList method on the Schedule object is called This method initialises the 3 dimensional WorkSpell container discussed in section 4 2 1 4 hence removing all WorkSpell objects from storage It then creates new WorkSpell objects based on the updated shiftList and sorts them into the 3D container 4 Finally called is the method within the main window that initialises and populates the VehicleBlock UserControl s and then stacks them on top of each other to form the visual schedule This effectively re draws the schedule with the new shiftList that no longer contains the deleted Shift object This enables the user to delete any shift in the schedule manually 4 4 3 2 Adding a Shift The initial functionality that allowed the user to add a shift from all the candidate shifts in the data that were not already in the schedule was as follows 43 Open a new window called candidateShiftDialog from the main window when a button called ViewCandidateShiftsButton is clicked List every Shift object stored within the application except for the Shift objects that are in the crew schedule in
19. the data files sesessssssssss 25 4 1 2 1 1 Trans Class os oo ce es cool eA ee rA CUTE 25 4 1 2 1 2 re 25 4 1 2 1 3 HawDala Class os o eere i AFER da 26 4 1 2 2 Initialising ReliefOpp WorkPiece and Shift Objects 26 4 1 2 2 1 ReliefOpportunities Class 27 4 1 2 2 2 WorkPieces Glass octo er EE ee Ov eere reges irent 27 4 1 2 2 3 CandidatesShifis Glass o sou t aste pu bs E enere rrer 28 4 1 2 3 Schedule Class t tr p eiie n eperbdalqee 29 4 1 3 Iteration EE 29 Be iterato EE 29 4 2 1 Implementing the schedule desion 29 4 2 1 1 Initialising and stacking Vehicle Blocks 30 4 2 1 2 Converting Time Property Values nssseeeseeeeeeeeeeeeen 30 Vii 4 2 1 3 Displaying ROs and We A 31 4 2 1 4 Displaying Shifts AAA 33 4 2 2 Iteration 2 Tests EE 36 4 3 Iteration 3 across tete Ce veis Ede CoN a eee ELEM 37 4 3 1 Displaying data for selected ReliefOpp and WorkPiece objects 37 4 3 1 1 Retrieving the selected ReliefOpp and WorkPiece object37 4 3 1 2 Window Displaying Retrieved RO Data 37 4 3 2 Iteration 3 Progress Meeting Feedback 38 4 3 2 1 Resultant Modttceatons essee 38 24 e sette Coetus eno deo mista mua en V 39 EST HR nn E 39 4 4 2 Specified Shift Display Wumdow sssssnnsneeesseennrrnnnrsssrrrrerrnreessee 40 4 4 2 1 Retrieving the Shift object ssssessssssss 40 4 4 2 2 Collecting VehicleB
20. the day that it represents The process of creating and populating the labels is as follows 1 The earliest and latest hours these values are in terms of minutes of the train crew schedule are taken as parameter arguments by the TimeLine s constructor and stored as variables earliestTime and latestTime respectively 2 The total number of hours between the earliest and latest hour is calculated and stored using the following formula latestTime earliestTime 60 Number of hours 3 A for loop iterates over the number of hours using counter value A label is initialised within each iteration called timeLabel 5 The time value that timeLabel will represent is calculated using the following formula earliestTime 60 i time 6 A TimeSpan object is used to convert time from minutes to hours and minutes in hh mm format which is then assigned to the content property of timeLabel 7 The horizontal position value of timeLabel named binding Time is calculated using the following formula 40 earliestTime time earliestTime latestTime width 2 bindingTime width value is the constant value used for the width of the entire visual schedule 8 timeLabel is added to timeLineCanvas and positioned using bindingTime s value TimeLine is added to the main windows StackPanel scheduleStack before the VehicleBlock objects are so that it appears at the top of the visual schedule 4 4 2 Specified Shift Display
21. the list Selected shift is OK presented highlighted and further properties are displayed in grid at bottom of window 2 Press Add Shift Button All windows close except OK the main window The selected shift is added to the visual schedule as work spell components Test Purpose Save Crew Schedule to a file 1 Press Save Schedule button File browser opens OK 2 Name the file DS2 and save it to A new file is saved to the OK the desktop desktop that contains lines of integer values that represent the shifts within the current schedule Test Purpose Load new set of data file 1 Press Load Files button Message box saying OK 69 Select the Trains File you want to be read in appears 2 Press OK button File browser opens OK 3 Find and Open DST ams file Message box saying OK from DS1 folder on memory stick Select the corresponding Shifts file appears 4 Press Ok button File browser opens OK 5 Find and Open DS1 shifts file A new visual schedule is OK from DS1 folder on memory stick drawn that represents the data from the new files Feedback Question Answer Do you think the application offers a good solution to the problem Yes it does provide a good interface that allows modification of crew schedules in a feasible way The user does not need to check for feasibility but the application does Moreover the impleme
22. the solution Maheshwari and Jain 2012 p287 1 5 4 Selected Methodology The minimum requirements defined for this project are generic and will not be well understood until developing the user interface is well underway Therefore a flexible methodology is required which rules out the Waterfall method There will be little to no chance of interacting with a train planner who is the intended user of the solution which nullifies many of the benefits of prototyping This leaves the iterative methodology as the most suitable for the project 1 6 Relevance to Degree The second year Software Engineering module took students through the motions of a how to perform a software project With this being a software project a lot of the knowledge gained from the module can be applied to creating the plan structure of the structure Another second year module Graphical User Interfaces taught students the general process of creating a user interface using popular languages and GUI frameworks 1 7 Project Schedule Project Schedule Weeks Figure 1 Gantt Chart of initial schedule that was drawn up in week 1 Red cells represent deadlines The schedule chart was made at the start of the project with purpose of listing all tasks to be undertaken and sequencing them appropriately so that the project will be completed in the required timescale mu Figure 2 Gantt Chart of revised schedule
23. think the application could be improved Answer 5 It could be improved if the saved data can be loaded graphically Different colours for different shifts would make them easier to differentiate However it is solved since whenever one clicks a shift just those work spells belonging to this shift are highlighted 5 2 3 Conclusion The feedback received was very positive Regarding the points made by the user in answer to the question How do you think the application could be improved e It could be improved if the saved data can be loaded graphically Attempts were made to achieve this as is discussed in section 4 5 3 however there was limited time left to complete the implementation e Different colours for different shifts would make them easier to differentiate However it is solved since whenever one clicks a shift just those work pieces belonging to this shift are highlighted Whilst 58 as the user mentions there is already a part solution to the problem that it is possible two visual shifts can have the same colour Another possible solution that could be implemented if time allowed it would be to create a list of all the colour values available in WPF then when a crew schedule is generated hand the colours out from the list to each shift as it is added to the schedule This would guarantee that every shift would have a unique colour 5 3 Self Evaluation To perform an objective self evaluation
24. timeframe of the project no time was spent trying to understand the steps of the algorithm as it was being ported into the solution as it was not of relevance to the projects aim However it was noted that for every Shift object that was assigned to a WorkPiece object the WorkPiece objects coverCount property was increased by 1 Once the algorithm has completed its cycle the method returns the Schedule object with its populated list of Shift objects property 4 1 3 Iteration 1 Evaluation Tests were performed throughout the implementation of handling the train crew scheduling data to ensure that it was being read in and stored as expected The method for testing was to print properties of the objects to the debug console and then compare the results to the data files An example of the code used to achieve this can be seen in Figure 18 public void PrintString e 1 t RO vehicle ForEach x gt System Diagnostics Debug Writeline x ToString Figure 18 Snippet of code used to print a property of the Trains class RO_vehicle 4 2 Iteration 2 4 2 1 Implementing the schedule design As was outlined in the initial design discussed in section 3 4 1 WPFs UserControl class was used to create a graphical VehicleBlock class type The UserControl class has a content property that defines the ContentControl of the UserControl This effectively means the container that is used to define the layout for the UserControl It was imp
25. vehicle blocks that the shift covers in the data VehicleBlock objects are retrieved from allVehicleBlocks and collected into a list called shiftVehicleBlocks Hence collecting the VehicleBlock objects that the retrieved Shift covers 4 4 2 3 Displaying Collection of VehicleBlock objects The initial design plan to display the vehicle blocks that had been collected into shiftVehicleBlocks was to open a new window that contains a Stackpanel and add each zie VehicleBlock item from shiftVehicleBlocks to it However this did not work due to it being impossible to visually display an instance of a UserControl twice at the same time Each VehicleBlock item within shiftVehicleBlocks was already being displayed in the main window Two possible solutions were considered Create copies of each VehicleBlock object within shiftVehicleBlocks and add them to the new windows StackPanel This is effectively the same solution created in the design process except the problem of not being able to display a single UserControl instance twice at the same time is side stepped However this method was discarded after it dramatically slowed the application due to the processing power required to copy every component of each VehicleBlock object Instead of a new window being created to display the vehicle blocks the MainWindow s scheduleStack property is cleared of all its children components and is filled with the VehicleBlock items within shiftVehicleBlocks Cha
26. when generating a crew schedule If somehow it was implemented that shifts with lower costs were somehow preferred to others then the algorithm would be more effective at minimising costs when generating crew schedules 5 3 3 What would be done differently Below is a list of what would be done differently and what steps would be taken to avoid the problems faced throughout the project 1 Resizing of the desktop application was not taken into consideration at the start of the implementation When eventually attempts were made to make the application resize sensibly it proved a very difficult process due to the different size values used throughout the entire source code To avoid this resizing tests would be performed throughout the entire implementation 2 More frequent user evaluations would be performed throughout the implementation stage to make sure the application was simple and easy to use When the first and only user evaluation was performed during the implementation stage it was clear from the feedback that the application was not simple to use for a new user 60 5 4 Future Work If more time was given to spend developing the software application the following list of improvements would be made 1 List of all Candidate Shifts Functionality that allows the user to view a list that contains every candidate shift from within the data files This was attempted during the implementation stage Section 4 4 3 2 however th
27. 008 p4 The data that details a vehicle schedule and the available crew shifts for a specific day comes in the form of two plain text files that can stretch up to tens of thousands of integer values long A train planner needs to be able to navigate through this data to process a crew schedule from the resources available that minimises costs 1 2 Project Aim The purpose of this project is to design and develop a software application that makes visualising and navigating through the large amounts of data involved in a train crew schedule an easy process that aids in minimising costs by creating an interactive visual schedule 1 3 Project Plan The basic plan for the project is as follows e Perform background research to gain an understanding of the subject area This will begin by finding background reading and gathering relevant literature and then studying the alternative solutions along with the two data sets that are involved in train crew scheduling The minimum requirements and possible extensions will be devised during this process e Devise a sensible work schedule based on the time available and the minimum requirements devised for the project e Applying knowledge gained from the background research to create a basic plan for the application that is to be produced This process will involve experimenting with interface designs deciding upon functionality and creating a basic class structure for the application e Research for appr
28. 014 p34 p37 Critique of Iqbal s solution compared to the solution of this project A critique of each functionality summarised in section 5 1 compared to the similar functionalities performed in this projects solution 1 Visual display of schedules a Iqbal s train unit representation of the schedule gives no indication of time due to the distance between each RO being the same throughout each chart For the user to find the start and end times of a WS they would have to work out the ID values of the WPs that are at the start and end of the shift by counting pairs of ROs then navigate to the visual display made up of WP charts and find the corresponding charts based on the ID values To find the start and end times of a WS in this projects solution the user has to select the WS and the times are then presented in a label on the same page Therefore in terms of explaining what happens in terms of time within the train crew schedule this projects solution outperforms Iqbal s b The colours used to distinguish WSs in Iqbal s solution are assigned based on what order the WS is drawn onto the vehicle blocks chart which means a specific colour does not represent a specific shift which makes visualising a shift across the entire schedule confusing In this solution for this project it is a 54 Shift object that is assigned a colour value therefore allowing the user to visualise a shift across the entire schedule via the colour of i
29. 1 Minimum Requirements os eo foede oci e eterne t ee ob e re 6 tua 58 5 3 2 POSSIDIGZEMCNSIONS E 59 5 3 3 What would be done differently ssesesseessssss 59 bt Future e EE 60 5 5 ACONCINS OM SE 60 LISTOL Referentes issi nerna eera raen EE 61 Appendix A External Materials eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnn nnns 63 Appendix B Ethical Issues Addressed eese 64 Appendix C Completed End of Project User Evaluation Form 65 Functionality EValuditlgrio s ions eiie ere nU tonus at 65 COAG escis oce RC Ma nM MAL EE 69 Appendix D Completed User Evaluation Form That Was Performed During the Implementatlon hera Romer nator enr tla eels 71 det e 71 E o PHP 71 Feedback SEP een 71 Abbreviations Phrases that are used commonly throughout the report have been abbreviated too e RO Relief opportunity e WP Work piece e WS Work spell e WPF Windows Presentation Foundation 1 Introduction 1 1 Problem Statement Train crew scheduling is a complex task that involves organising potentially thousands of possible crew shifts into a vehicle schedule every day Opcom c2001 p1 For a Train Operating Company the cost of crew shifts is often the most expensive part of operating costs therefore train crew scheduling is a very important part of the planning of railway operations process Laplagne 2
30. 28v vs 1109629 aspx Last accessed 31st May 2015 Microsoft c2015 Selector SelectionChanged Event Available https msdn microsoft com en us library system windows controls primitives selector selectionchanged v vs 110 aspx Last accessed 29th May 2015 Microsoft c2015 StackPanel Class Available https msdn microsoft com en gb library system windows controls stackpanel v vs 90 aspx Last accessed 29th May 2015 Microsoft C2015 System Windows Shapes Namespace Available https msdn microsoft com en us library system windows shapes v vs 110 aspx Last accessed 25th May 2015 Microsoft C2015 ToggleButton Class Available https msdn microsoft com en us library system windows controls primitives togglebutton9628v vs 1109629 aspx Last accessed 29th May 2015 Microsoft c2015 UserControl Class Available https msdn microsoft com en us library system windows controls usercontrol9628vzvs 1 109629 aspx Last accessed 28th May 2015 Microsoft C2015 Visual Studio Available https www visualstudio com Last accessed 29th May 2015 Microsoft c2015 WPF Container Controls Overview Available https msdn microsoft com en gb library bb5 14628 28v vs 90 29 aspx Last accessed 25th May 2015 Opcom c2001 Rail Crew Scheduling Rostering and Management 1 Overview p1 Qt c2015 Using Containers in Qt Designer Available http doc qt io qt 4 8 designer using containers html Last access
31. Errore P vedere ie ae 6 2 2 1 Defining Terminology uoces cee se erect o Prep cre eo Rate ettet 6 2 2 2 Train Crew Gchecdulmg AAA 7 2 3 Data Files EE 8 2 3 1 Trains File SPEM EDIT ee 8 2 3 2 Shlfis LE 9 24 AlterateSolDtlort xoc net aet tars mer e Dr re ee peperere pats 9 E Wat e EE 9 2 4 2 Program Description eiecit cael eee o cen Lee otn 10 2 4 3 Critique me TK DL In LS 11 2 5 Programming Languages e uer oe Rt ehe d 12 M Design of Applicaltl n eine tr tenerse incar 13 e NEA tior rei ec ER 13 3 2 Basic Class Structure Au 13 3 3 Visual Display of Schedule ANEN 14 3 3 T Gonsideratlons c ote o at bte oi eerte n hha 14 3 3 2 Initial Schedule Models cor eei torte t eo pe reise 14 943 2 T EE RT e toro E cd Er noi tH 16 3 3 3 Displaying RO and WP Data 17 3 3 3 1 Windows Presentation Foundation 19 3 3 3 2 Experimentation with WEE 20 3 8 4 Main WINdOW EE 21 3 3 5 Specified Shift Display Wimdow sssssssssenesesrneeererneserernrsrrerneerne 21 3 4 Software Development Tools Ak 22 3 4 1 Programming Language ENNEN 22 Sa 2 IDE i23 d uote esatta vn MD ee 23 3 4 3 Version Control oie coe eie oe e aee NU RR te e Red 23 Implementallon 65 rec ee ee ed ies ees 24 4 1 teratom T E 24 4 1 1 Creating and Populating the Project Folder 24 4 1 2 Initial Data Handling eui cea tio t ES odi OE beet 24 4 1 2 1 Reading in
32. Os called reliefOppListBox was customised to draw an ellipse for every ReliefOpp object and a rectangle for every ReliefOpp object for which the workpieceStarted property was not null This was done by bounding the WorkPiece object s that is contained within the workpieceStarted property duration value to the width property of the rectangle and having it passed through the duration converter file 2 00 KListBox ItemTemplate DataTemplate lt Grid Container to structure the controls within the ItemTemplate gt arid lt Grid RowDefinitions gt lt RowDefinition gt lt RowDefinition Height 12 gt lt RowDefinition Height Auto gt Grid RowDefinitions Canvas Grid Row Height 12 gt Ellipse Fill Black Width 10 Height 17 Canvas Left 5 gt lt Rectangle that visually displays startedWorkPiece using duration as binding gt Rectangle Canvas Bottom 1 Name workPieceline Fill Black Height 7 Width Binding workPieceStartedDuration Converter StaticResource durationConverter ConverterParameter StaticResource width gt lt Canvas gt lt Grid gt lt DataTemplate gt K ListBox ItemTemplate Figure 20 Code that defines the ItemTemplate property for reliefOppListBox The process of passing the correct collection of ReliefOpp objects from the list of all ReliefOpp objects to the temsSource of each VehicleBlock s reliefOppListBox was performed within the same for loop that the
33. Schedule 3 3 1 Considerations Throughout the design and development of the user interface the following questions were considered e Is the display easy to read and understand It is important that the interface is self explanatory and makes logical sense so that the user can visualise and navigate through the data as effectively as possible e Is the data being displayed relevant Will the data that the interface is presenting actually aid a train planner e Is the display visually pleasing Though not as important as the other questions a visually displeasing interface could potentially discourage users in their work 3 3 2 Initial Schedule Model As is discussed in section 2 2 1 a vehicle schedule is a set of vehicle blocks compiled together and a train crew schedule is a vehicle schedule that has been allocated shifts to cover the WPs Therefore a train crew schedule can be visually formed by iteratively creating vehicle blocks and grouping them together A vehicle blocks size is defined by the start time of the first RO and the finish time of the last WP By stacking vehicle blocks on top of one another with each starting at the same longitudinal coordinate the difference in length would be easily visualised However in terms of a daily schedule this method would give no indication as to what time of day the vehicle blocks components take place To achieve this 45 each vehicle block is placed inside a container that has a
34. Window The process of implementing the design that is outlined in section 3 3 5 is split into three stages 1 Retrieving the Shift object that corresponds to the WS selected by the user 2 Collecting the VehicleBlock objects that the retrieved shift covers 3 Displaying the collection of VehicleBlock objects to the user 4 4 2 1 Retrieving the Shift object 1 The process within the WorkSpellRow UserControl that is used to store the selected WorkSpell object is identical to the method outlined in section 4 3 1 1 by making use of a ListBox s Selectedltem property and SelectionChanged event 2 A Shift object called SelectedShift is initialised and assigned the retrieved WorkSpell objects parentShift property value 3 A delegate type is declared within the MainWindow class that enables its DisplayShiftMethod method to be invoked from within the WorkSpellRow UserControl 4 The method is invoked and the SelectedShift property is passed through as a parameter to the main window where it is stored as a property of the MainWindow object called SelectedShift Hence the Shift object that corresponds to the WS selected by the user is retrieved and stored 4 4 2 2 Collecting VehicleBlock objects When each instance of a VehicleBlock UserControl is initialised in the main window discussed in 4 2 1 1 it is stored into a list called a VehicleBlocks Using SelectedShift s vehicleBlocksCoveredByShift property value a list of integers representing the
35. ain the visual train crew schedule including the timeline The selectable components that compile together to make the visual schedule enables access to all the data that describes the train crew schedule via observing and interacting with the display e g to find the final arrival time of the entire schedule shown in Figure 15 the user can observe that vehicle block 4 ends last then select the shift covering the final work piece by clicking the green rectangle to unveil its properties which will include the finish time thus giving the user their answer Main Window D _ _ 0000 Timeline Vehicle Block 2 Scroll Bar Vehicle Block 4 Figure 15 Design of main window 3 3 5 Specified Shift Display Window When considering how the application would scale as the data set size increase it lead to thinking how the user could efficiently inspect a specific shift in the schedule The problem being that if a shift has a WS covering a WP on vehicle block 1 and another covering a WP on vehicle block 60 it will require the user to scroll a long way to be able to inspect them both against each other Therefore the ability to visually group a shift will be implemented that will allow the user to collect and display the specific vehicle blocks that a selected shift covers This will be done by opening a new window when a shifts WS is selected In the new window the relevant visual vehicle blocks from the main windo
36. ality of adding and deleting shifts from the train crew schedule and both enable the user to save the crew schedule to a file However only Iqbal s solution provides a way of printing the visual schedule which offers the user a method of storing and referring back to a visual display once the application has been closed Therefore it is believed that whilst Iqbal s solution provides the user with the ability to print the visual schedule it is otherwise outperformed by this projects solution due to the difference in data provided to the user the manner in which data is presented to the user and how they both scale when the data set size increases 5 2 User Evaluation An end of project user evaluation was performed by a researcher in Railway Planning The purpose of this evaluation was to gain feedback from someone who has background knowledge in the relevant areas of the project The assumption made is that a person who has background knowledge of train crew scheduling will be able to better formulate an objective opinion than someone without background knowledge on the applications attempt to solve the problem The user evaluations structure was split into three steps 1 A brief description of the projects aim the timeline in which the project was performed and the general purpose of the software application was given to the user The user was given time to explore the application and ask questions The user performed a functionality evaluati
37. along with the location identification The location value will refer to a specific place in the world e g Location ID 1 Liverpool and Location ID 3 London The identification of the specific train vehicle that will arrive at each RO is also included in the file as the Train unit ID 2 3 2 Shifts File E g DS1 shifts Relief opportunity indices 17 20 BHM NH ee PWHFEHEWOODT 1000 oM 40NH OOOOOO0 oooooooooooo oooooooooooo oooooooooooo oooooooooooo B e e e e GO Ww Ww MHHHHHHHIHHHH oooooooooooo 2 2 2 2 2 spell1 spell2 spell3 I3 UE Shift type No of spells in the shift Cost Figure 5 Sample layout illustrating the format of a Shifts file and identifying which data is not relevant This illustration is taken from a material supplied by the project supervisor This file contains data for all the shifts that are available to be allocated onto the vehicle schedule that is detailed in the corresponding trains file Each line of integers represents an individual shift therefore Number of candidate shifts Number of lines in file The number of WSs in each shift is specified along with the ROs that each WS occurs between The cost of each shift is defined by the amount of minutes spent working and the shift type value determines what that particular shift is classified as and the depot value refers to the location that the crew has to report to often at the start and end of a shi
38. an infinite number of WorkSpel Row objects to be added before the WSs stop being visually displayed To be able to distinguish which WS belongs to which shift in the visual representation the Shift class type is given a Color property value that is assigned using a random number generator Each WorkSpell object inherits a colour value from its parent Shift however it has to be converted from a Color to an instance of a SolidColorBrush class so that it can be bound to a Rectangle object s Fill property Figure 24 Screen cap of application being executed Overlapping WSs are stacked above each other 4 2 2 Iteration 2 Tests The tests performed throughout iteration 2 involved using a larger data set DS2 that was supplied by Raymond Kwan to make sure the application could sensibly handle realistically sized train crew scheduling data sets 37 Comparing Data Sets Relief Opportunities Vehicle Blocks Candidate Shifts Figure 25 Table comparing size of DS1 and DS2 data sets One problem created from this iteration was that due to the colours being assigned randomly it is possible for two shifts to have the same colour value which could cause confusion for the user when trying to distinguish shifts from within the visual display 4 3 Iteration 3 4 3 1 Displaying data for selected ReliefOpp and WorkPiece objects The process of displaying the data for a user specified ReliefOpp or WorkPiece object discussed in section
39. and stores it into the workpieceStarted property of the ReliefOpp object WorkPieces has one property Al WorkPieces which is populated with every WorkPiece object created within the constructor 4 1 2 2 3 CandidateShifts Class The purpose of this class is to create and populate Shift objects from the data file values that describe the shifts in the data set and then collects them all into Al Shifts This class type takes the 2 dimensional list of integers that was initialised in the Shifts object and contains each line of raw data from the shifts file This is achieved by 1 Aforloop that iterates over the number of shifts in the data set hence iterating over the 2 dimensional list of integers 2 Alist of integers is initialised and has a list from the 2D list assigned to it that contains all the data values for a specific shift 3 Anew Shift object is initialised with certain values from the list of integers being passed as parameters to the constructor These values are the shifts ID the number of WSs contained within the shift the cost of the shift and the shifts depot 4 Aninner for loop iterates over the number of WSs in the shift 5 The identification values of the start and end RO of each WS are retrieved from the list of integers and used to access the corresponding ReliefOpp objects from AllReliefOpps which are then added to a list of HeliefOpp objects respectively This list is then added to a list of list of ReliefOpp object
40. ay of creating a reusable graphical component that can be custom designed to contain other components WPF s UserControl class provides exactly that Microsoft c2015 UserControl Class Therefore due to the discovered capabilities of WPF and its compatibility with C which is a programming language that has similar syntax to C C with the WPF framework was the chosen programming language for the implementation of the project 23 3 4 2 IDE Integrated Development Environments offer facilities to developers with the purpose of aiding the software engineering process Different IDEs provide different functionality making it a developers choice to decide on the most appropriate for their project Most supply compilers for their supported programming languages Some offer visual designers that allow developers to view changes to their design as they modify the code and functionality that enables the developer to build an interface via dragging and dropping components Due to the lack of prior experience with using WPF a visual designer was highly sought after Microsoft s Visual Studio is an Integrated Development Tool that provides an environment for developing WPF applications using a visual designer It also offers support for the C programming language via a compiler and debugger Microsoft c2015 Visual Studio Due to not being able to find another IDE that provides a visual designer for WPF along with being generally impressed wit
41. be forced to refer to the data files e There is no functionality that allows the user to manually modify the generated train crew schedule 12 2 5 Programming Languages The minimum requirements defined in 1 4 formed an outline of what programming practices would have to be used during the creation of the final solution e Reading in file data requirement 1 e Object orientated programming requirement 1 e Graphical User Interface programming requirement 2 Therefore these were the characteristics that were used as filters when deciding upon the initial list of programming languages that would be most suitable for the project From the first year of the University of Leeds Computer Science degree C is taught and it was used as one of the programming languages that introduced students to object orientated programming In the second year of the course the Graphical User Interface module is taught using C and the Qt framework Due to the knowledge and skills gained from the degree course C was the most suitable programming language to be chosen for the project based on the minimum requirements 2432 3 Design of Application 3 1 Introduction This section of the report describes the design process of the project in the order in which it happened A from the ground up approach was taken with a basic class structure for the application being devised first and then the initial interface design being created based upon its
42. calculates the width value for the objects visual rectangle using the following formula bound duration value width of container LatestTime EarliestTime Width value The converter files were added to each relevant data binding via its Converter property so that each bound value is passed to the converter which then calculates and returns the converted value 4 2 1 3 Displaying ROs and WPs The cell defined by the second column and row of each VehicleBlock object s Grid container initially contained two ListBox classes that overlapped each other One was bound to a list of ReliefOpp objects and the other to a list of WorkPiece objects Although the ellipses and rectangles that were drawn to visually represent a RO and WP were positioned and sized correctly according to the bound data values that come from the corresponding ReliefOpp and WorkPiece objects it was impossible to select the items of the ListBox that was overlapped by the other The initial solution to this problem that was considered was to add a button to the main window that would allow the user to switch between being able to select WPs or ROs however this was disregarded as it would overcomplicate the interface After referring back to the property values for the ReliefOpp class it was decided that by making use of the workpieceStarted property the ListBox that drew the WPs would be removed completely Then the temTemplate property value of the ListBox that draws R
43. capabilities The purpose of this process was to take the knowledge gained from the background research that had been collected and use it to design an effective solution for the problem stated in section 1 1 Creating the design also gave better understanding as to what software development tools would be best suited for creating the solution 3 2 Basic Class Structure As is stated in section 2 4 1 the GreedyHeuristics program could be used as a basic template for reading and preparing the files data Therefore the class structure in Figure 7 was the starting point for the basic class structure design for the project solution However changes were made for reasons listed below e Two new class types have been introduced called Trains and Shifts The purpose of these is to keep a clear separation between the raw data read in from the Trains file and the Shifts file e The GreedyHeuristics class type has been renamed to PrepareData This small change has been made because the name PrepareData better represents the functionality of the class in terms of importance of achieving the solution e The Schedule object is to be instantiated within the Main Window instead of PrepareData This is to reduce the gap between the user interface and the train crew schedule data 14 Class Diagram PrepareData Schedule RawData Trains WorkPiece ReliefOpp Figure 8 Simple drawing displaying the basic class structure 3 3 Visual Display of
44. constant width Each horizontal unit of space inside a container represents an amount of time The left and right end of the containers define the time frame that the train crew schedule takes place in A vehicle blocks position along the x axis of the container is decided by the start time of the first RO Then if each container is directly stacked on top of one another this should give the overall schedule a global timeline and enable the user to visualise what times the vehicle block components happen in relation to each other Work Spell Work Piece b Vehicle Block ji Container Relief Opportunity Figure 9 Initial vehicle block design Figure 9 was the first blueprint for a vehicle block The concept was that the nature of the shapes e g the colour and size representing each component should give information about the data behind it e RO As is discussed in section 2 2 1 a RO represents a specific time A small circle is used to give the effect that this is a small point in time The colour black is used for both ROs and WPs to express that these are constant values within a train crew schedule They do not change e WP A horizontal line is used to display a stretch in time The length of the line indicates the duration of the WP As stated above the colour black is used to express that this is a constant component in the train crew schedule e WS For the same reasons as a WP a horizontal line is used WS s have c
45. da by Harry Duce lt harry duce Ely Started converting Python scheduling algorithm to C 35b38 by Harry Duce harry d 26 February 2015 Created line class attempted to draw lines SebO by Harry Duce harry du hotmail com Did Bl Added restNode class and XAML to paint selectable ellipses fa7917 by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotm 16 February 2015 Created basic lines with buttons 8612c1 by Harry Di rry duce hotmail com gt 16 Be 11 February 2015 First WPF solution created y Harry Duce harry o id Ghotmail t FinalYearProject commits Commits Branch Updates Path MM Au gt 20 04 2015 Harry Duce lt harry duc 19 April 2015 0904 Harry Duce harry duce gt 19 04 2015 Added WorkSpell class and Schedule class 5e6143 by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmail com gt 19 04 2015 15 April 2015 26 March 2015 19 March 2015 ure 9d by Harry Duce commented code by Harry Duce harry di 9tmail com IN Now using much larger data set Sightly modified time scale 7ed16b by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmail com gt 19 18 March 2015 Deleted reliefNode class as it s now been replaced by ReliefOpp class c58ae3 by Harry Du hotmail com 18 03 2015 lt harry duc hotmail com 1 Application now draws lines and nodes all from read in data 59469 by Harry Duce harry d 17 March 2015
46. data files there are WPs with durations as short as five minutes Displaying these in a visual schedule that covers twenty six hours when the actual timeframe of the schedule is less whilst there is limited screen space would have resulted in compacted components making the interface difficult to read If the width of the visual vehicle block container was a known constant value e g 100 units and the earliest start time and the latest finish time of the entire schedule could be X ra determined from the file data e g start time 0200 and end time 1200 then it would be possible to calculate the amount of time that each horizontal unit in the container represents Finish time Start Time Width 2 Amount of minutes per unit 1200 200 100 10 minutes per unit With these values it would then be possible to e Assign the left end of the container with the earliest start time value and the right end with the latest finish time value e Position components longitudinally within the vehicle block by converting their start time values to units of the container e Create a visual timeline illustrating the time intervals along the schedule This method would more efficiently pack the visual components of a vehicle block into the container by basing the timeframe on the actual data values from each data set 3 3 3 Displaying RO and WP Data The schedule design Figure 10 along with a visual timeline displays some of the data behind
47. data is given about the shift that is to be deleted other than its ID value and the ID value of one of the WPs that it covers Before deleting a shift from a train crew schedule in this projects solution the user can manually select the shift from within the visual schedule to view all of its property values before deciding to delete it from the schedule This once again means that a train planner can make a more informed decision whilst using this projects solution 56 4 Saving the Crew Schedule Both applications allow the user to save a train crew schedule to a file However Iqbal s application allows the user to save a printed copy of the visual schedule This allows the user to refer back to a visual schedule This projects solution provides no such functionality 5 1 3 Conclusion Iqbal s solution provides limited data to the user in comparison to this projects solution As can be seen from the calculations in section 5 1 2 this solution scales better when the size of data sets increase Visualising the timeline of the schedule within Iqbal s solution is a confusing process of jumping back and forward between the two displays to be able to understand when each component occurs Within this projects solution all the components that a train crew schedule consists of are displayed within a global timeline which makes it possible to compare start and end times of components just by observing their positioning Both solutions provide the function
48. e time left Increase the height of the rectangle components that WPs and WSs It was clear from the users feedback that a large annoyance was how hard it was to select WP and WS components Increasing the width makes the hit box larger and therefore easier to click Add a label that displays the colour of the shift that is selected by the user Due to the large amount of shifts in the schedule when using DS2 it is difficult to keep track of which shift is selected Being able to see what the colour of the selected shift is will aid in finding it within the visual schedule Change the cursors appearance when hovering over a selectable component A answer from the feedback Provide better visual feedback when selecting a work shift implied that it was hard to tell when a WS component had been selected or not Therefore changing the cursors appearance to a hand whilst it hovers over a WS component will provide the user with knowledge that if they click at that position a component will be selected Change the background colour of each VehicleBlock object that contains WS components that belong to the selected shift Changing the background of vehicle blocks when a shift is selected achieves both o Providing the user with visual feedback that a WS component has been selected 48 o And to quote from the feedback Highlight all work spells of the same shift when one is selected Which will make navigating to each WS component that
49. e methods that were attempted caused the application to crash due to the large number of candidate shifts in the data set A possible way of achieving this would be to create a list that loads 50 shift items at a time and the user can select a load more shifts button that would display 50 more A Zoom Function As was pointed out by the user during the mid implementation user evaluation the visual display can be very condensed when the time difference between schedule components is very small This can lead to visual components overlapping each other which makes them hard to visualise and select Some sort of zoom function would allow the user to zoom in on the components splitting them apart This could also allow for extra data to be displayed within the visual schedule by making property values visible once the user has zoomed in a certain amount Select the train crew scheduling Algorithm It could be possible that a train planner wants to compare train crew scheduling algorithms against each other Functionality would be added that allows the user to select what algorithm they want to use before the crew schedule is generated File Handling Errors The application currently crashes if the user selects files that are not of the format of trains and shifts files This would be fixed using file handling errors that would present a message to the user informing them of their mistake 5 5 Conclusion To conclude the results of each e
50. e property of the window did not equal null The event handler for when addShiftButton is clicked initialises a list of Shift objects called shiftsCoveringSelectedWorkPiece and populates it with the items from the stored WorkPiece objects choiceShifts property except for the Shift objects present in the Schedule objects shiftList A candidateShiftDialog window is initialised and the shiftsCoveringSelectedWorkPiece list is passed as a parameter argument to the constructor of the window The shiftsCoveringSelectedWorkPiece is passed through to the candidateShiftDialog s ListBox ItemsSource which visually displays each Shift in a vertical list The list orders the shifts in terms of their ID value to aid the user in finding a specific shift When the user selects a shift item and presses the AddShiftButton the corresponding Shift object is passed through to the main window using a delegate type method dl 6 The Shift object is added to the Schedule objects Shiftlist and the visual schedule is redrawn to display the new shift While this implementation can still cause long wait times for the ListBox to be populated with Shift objects it does not crash when using the larger data set hence offering a way for users to manually add shifts to the schedule All Candidate Shifts Available For Work Piece 16 Shift ID Number of Work Spells Cost Minutes Type Depot 29692 29717 29741 29753 29770 Pipl P
51. e separate algorithms that all returns a train crew schedule to switch between what algorithm is executed the developer must comment in the code they want 4 The generated train crew schedule is then outputted as a string that displays the number of shifts in the schedule and the ID values of each shift Harrys MacBook Pro 2 DS1 harryduce python greedyHeuristics 2 py DS1 Number of shifts in schedule 6 They are 11 23 25 26 13 2 Figure 6 A screen shot of the program being executed from the command line Figure 6 presents the execution of GreedyHeuristics when the two sample files displayed in figures four and five are passed as input The output tells the user the size of the crew schedule that has been generated in terms of the number of shifts allocated The identification number of each shift in the schedule is also presented 11 Main run GreedyHeuristics allROs Relief Opp List RawData allWPs WorkPiece List WP allShifts Shift List pp schedule Schedule 4 nVeh int nShifts int alg_firstEncountered void maxSpells int alg maxCoverageGain void vehStartRO int List alg byDeletion void vehEndRO int List prepData rawData void RO arrTime int List RO depTime int List x RO veh int List J T RO_location int List allShifts 2D List of integers trainsFiel file
52. eBlock objects and scroll bar 4 2 1 2 Converting Time Property Values In order for ReliefOpp WorkPiece and Shift objects to be positioned and sized correctly within each VehicleBlock their property values that represent the time at which they occur needed to be scaled to fit the width of the vehicle blocks container This was achieved using WPFs ValueConverter which offers developers a method of manipulating a binding value Microsoft c2015 ValueConverter Interface Two converter class files TimeValueConverter and DurationConverter were created and both given two static cus properties called EarliestTime and LatestTime The Trains class file was modified so it stored the earliest time in the schedule rounded down to the nearest hour in minutes and the latest time rounded up to the nearest hour in minutes Both these values were then assigned to the static properties EarliestTime and LatestTime respectively Using these values the two files then performed the following conversions e TimeValueConverter Takes the bound time value and the width value of the vehicle blocks container as input parameters and calculates the horizontal position value using the following formula EarliestTime bound time value EarliestTime LatestTime width of container Horizontal value e DurationConverter Takes the bound duration value of each object and the width value of the vehicle blocks container as input parameters and
53. each component in the schedule however there are properties that cannot be distinguished e g the unit code of the vehicle at each RO the location of each RO and the cost of a shift These are all values that need to be accessible to a train planner but cannot all be directly added to the visual schedule because there would not be enough space and it would become unreadable due to the vast amount of numbers that would be scattered across each vehicle block Therefore alternative methods had to be devised and explored 1 A network of combo box styled lists that enables the user to select and view specific components and their properties from lists of identification values e g a drop down list containing all ROs by their ID value o Using this method would force the user to take their attention away from the visualised schedule and instead spend time scrolling through lists of integer values until they find the specific component they were looking for Therefore the goal became looking for methods where user interaction with the visual schedule would reveal more data Figure 11 Generic Combo Box Jaksmata 2008 18 2 The next possibility was to let the user select a vehicle block which would open a new window containing a blown up version of that vehicle block In the newly available space the property values would be listed next to each component o This method would create interaction between the user and the visual schedule by
54. ections of the schedule so to better visualise certain components and highlight specific sections of the schedule 4 Enable the user to modify the schedule e g by adding and deleting shifts 59 The user is able to add and delete shifts from a schedule one by one They can also able to delete the entire crew schedule and can create an entire new crew schedule at the press of a button 5 3 2 Possible Extensions e The application lets the user save the crew schedule to a file The user is able to save the current crew schedule to a file however there is no current use for that file It cannot be re loaded back into the application nor is there another application that it could possibly be used for So whilst the solution does perform the function it has no use e Implement 3D graphics into the visual schedule display This possible extension was omitted due to the limited time available and because it wouldn t offer any aid in terms of helping the user navigate through the train crew schedule data which was the main priority However shadows were added to the visual WS components in an attempt to make the display more visually pleasing e Improve an algorithm used to generate crew schedules In hindsight due to the complexity of the algorithms used to generate crew schedules this was an unrealistic possible extension However what was noticed from the algorithms used is that none of them take the cost of shifts into account
55. ects a WS the ViewShift button is enabled and when clicked the scheduleStack is emptied of all its children and the VehicleBlock objects 42 that the SelectedShift covers are collected and added to it Hence visually displaying the vehicle blocks covered by the user specified shift o ViewFullScheduleButton s enabled when ViewShiftButton is clicked on This button offers a way for the user to revert back to viewing the entire schedule This is done by clearing the scheduleStack and refilling it with all the VehicleBlock items contained within a VehicleBlocks 4 4 3 Enabling the user to modify the schedule Giving the user the option to manually modify the crew schedule enables them to maximise the cost efficiency of each train crew schedule where the scheduling algorithm used fails to do so It also helps in the case where a schedule has already been finalised but at last minute a crew becomes unavailable a train planner would be able to remove the crew from the schedule see what pieces of work are not covered by a shift and add cover to each of them so that the train crew schedule is valid once again 4 4 3 1 Deleting a Shift A button was added to the main window called DeleteShiftButton The button is disabled unless there is a value being stored into Se ectedShift i e the user has a shift selected The buttons click event handler does the following process 1 Calls a method on the Schedule object called removeShift and passes
56. ed 25th May 2015 63 Appendix A External Materials GreedyHeuristics Python program provided by supervisor Dr Raymond Kwan The Max Coverage Gained and First Encountered algorithms contained within the solution were not devised during the project It was stated by the project supervisor that the algorithms could be used within the solution as a means to generate crew schedules Data sets DS1 and DS2 provided by supervisor Dr Raymond Kwan Kwan R 2015 File formats for the train crew scheduling datasets Technical notes School of Computing Univ of Leeds 64 Appendix B Ethical Issues Addressed The people who participated were given the following information prior to the user evaluations they performed e The purpose of the project e What they were expected to do during the evaluation e What the results of the user evaluation will be used for e What information of theirs will be given in the report They were then requested to sign a consent form This was done to provide proof of the users consent and to inform them of what details of theirs will be shared 65 Appendix C Completed End of Project User Evaluation Form Functionality Evaluation Step Procedure Expect Results Actual Results Test Purpose Load Data Files From DS2 Folder 1 Press Load Files Button Message box saying OK Select the Trains File you want to be read in appears 2 P
57. eir WSs This specific train crew schedule is valid because every WP is covered by a shift The train crew scheduling process does not need to take into account what specific jobs crew members are to perform 2 3 Data Files Format The data that the software system must take as input are two plane text data files that are the output of a commercial train crew scheduling system Kwan 2015 They each contain integer values exclusively and have specific formats that need to be understood to be able correctly read the data into an application The two files come with extensions trains and shifts 2 3 1 Trains File Max Work Relief Vehicle spells pieces opps blocks Shifts per shift 22 25 26 4 3 Ignore 1 RO per veh block Details of each RO 26 667 708 P 1289 1387 Arrival time lt 1023 1176 667 708 1297 1387 1023 1182 1203 1203 Train unit ID 1203 1203 1204 1204 Departure time S 3 2 3 3 Location ID 2 3 1 1 2 3 3 3 the remaining contents Figure 4 Sample layout illustrating the format of a Trains file and identifying which data is not relevant This illustration is taken from a material supplied by the project supervisor This file supplies the data that details the vehicle schedule From this sample we can deduce that the schedule is split into three vehicle blocks the first containing two RO s the second has twelve and the third has eleven Arrival and departure times are given for each RO
58. elivery of the final solution some small additions were made to the application These are as follows 1 Visual RO components had their widths reduced so that they covered less horizontal space This was done to better emphasise that a RO occurs at a specific time in a train crew schedule 2 Anew label was added to the main window that lists the start and end times of every WS that belongs to the currently selected shift This is to help the user visual where the WS components are within the train crew schedule 3 Vertical lines were added to the visual schedule to better display the hour marks 4 The contents of the label that previously displayed the vehicle blocks ID value was changed to the train units ID for that vehicle block This was done to emphasise that a vehicle block represents the journey of a particular train unit 4 5 5 Iteration 5 Tests The tests performed to ensure that the application correctly loaded and saved files were as follows e Loading files Having already loaded both the small and large data sets into the application this was a case of observing the visual schedule to see if it was identical to as it was prior to the new loading functionality 51 e Saving files The save file functionality would be performed and the created file would be observed to see if the contents matched the current train crew schedule within the application am mm SR TERES Number of Shifts in Schedule 81 Tota
59. enabling them to select vehicle blocks It would also aid in visualisation of the data because it would be drawing the data into the vehicle blocks display However this method was not preferred A typical use case for a train planner using a piece of software of this nature would involve them navigating to find a value for a specific component not an entire vehicle blocks worth 3 This design idea came about whilst contemplating how a user could select a vehicle block in part two above The basic principle was that every basic component within the visual representation of the schedule would be selectable e g the RO circles WP lines and shift lines that are drawn in Figure 10 After selecting a component the corresponding object stored in the application is retrieved and the property values are displayed via table format in a relatively small new window o This method would mean that all the data used to form the visual schedule is accessible via observing and interacting with the initial schedule interface It achieves this whilst also not having to makes any differences to the initial design discussed in 3 3 2 Select Relief Opportunity Display Relief Opportunity ID 6 Start Time End Time Location ID Train Unit ID Figure 12 Example design of window displaying selected components properties With the third of the three methods being preferred over the others the next stage was to find software that allows the manual po
60. er Controls Overview e Shapes namespace Gives developers access to a library of shape classes e g Ellipse Rectangle and Line Each of these classes have properties that enable customisation of the shapes e g Width property for the Rectangle class Microsoft c2015 System Windows Shapes Namespace Microsoft c2015 Rectangle Class e Data binding Allows for graphical elements to be bound to data from within the applications data storage Microsoft c2015 Data Binding Overview e ListBox class Inherits from the temsControl Class that is used to present a list of selectable items The ListBox class has a property called temsPanel that allows the developer to define the Panel Class that its items will be drawn on to ListBoxs ItemTemplate property means the visual structure of the items can be customised The temsSource property is the collection of data values that is contained by the ListBox Microsoft c2015 ListBox Class Microsoft c2015 ItemsControl ItemTemplate Property Microsoft c2015 temsControl ItemsPanel Property So in theory if a ListBox could be bound to a list of WP objects its temsPanel customised to be a Canvas and its temTemplate set as a rectangle shape that s width can be modified based on a property of a WP Then the goal of having selectable shape items can be achieved 20 3 3 3 2 Experimentation with WPF The idea expressed above was implemented using C and WPF The code used to create and cust
61. ew window opens OK Schedule button containing list of all shifts within the crew schedule S57 Test Purpose View a shift within the visual schedule by selecting it from list of shifts contained within the crew schedule 1 Select a shift from the list of shifts Shift selected becomes OK highlighted and labels below are populated with data relating to the shift 2 Press View Selected Shift in Current window closes OK Schedule button Main window is presented Labels at top of main window are populated with data relating to the selected shift The vehicle blocks that the selected shift covers are drawn a different colour Test Purpose Delete selected shift 1 Press Delete Shift button The selected shift is OK removed from the visual schedule Test Purpose View property values of a Work Piece 1 Click on a visual Work Piece New window opens OK displaying property values for the selected Work Piece and the start Relief Opportunity Test Purpose View list of candidate shifts that offer cover to the selected Work Piece 68 1 Press Add Shift to Work Piece New window opens OK button containing list of candidate shifts that offer cover to the selected Work Piece Test Purpose Add shift to schedule that covers the selected Work Piece 1 Select a shift from
62. ft via its identification number The Depot value corresponds to the location values given in the trains file 2 4 Alternate solution 2 4 1 Introduction During the first project supervision meeting Raymond Kwan presented and discussed a Python program titled GreedyHeuristics 2 py GreedyHeuristics This is an alternative solution to the train crew scheduling problem due to it being a command line program that offers no user interface He instructed that this program should be used as a template for reading in and preparing the data from the plain text files He also suggested that the algorithms used within this program could be used in the solution as a means for generating an initial train crew schedule Therefore a thorough understanding of the program was a necessary prerequisite 10 2 4 2 Program Description This is a command line program written in Python A basic outline of the steps this program takes from start to finish are as follows 1 Takes a Trains file and Shifts file as input at run time and reads in and stores the data according to the file formats 2 RO WP and shift objects are created iteratively with their properties being assigned values from the data They are aggregated into three separate lists based on their class type 3 An algorithm is then executed using the three lists from step 2 to generate a train crew schedule which is stored as a list of shift objects Contained within the Python code are thre
63. h the layout of Visual Studio it was chosen for the project 3 4 3 Version Control Version control is a security measure that enables developers to save increments of their work to a remote machine giving them access to each save when faced with the following situations e The developers work that is saved to their own machine becomes damaged or lost e The developer breaks the software they have saved to their own machine so they need to revert back to a previous version where the software was stable Git version control is readily integrated into the Visual Studio environment enabling access to the committed work via a developers online Visual Studio account Due to the ease of use of the integrated version control Git was chosen OA 4 Implementation This section describes the implementation of the design split into iterations detailing e How the functionalities defined in the design were created within the software application e Where and why the work deviated away from the initial designs e When modifications were made to features that had already been created e Testing and evaluation performed at the end of each iteration e What extension work was performed 4 1 Iteration 1 4 1 1 Creating and Populating the Project Folder The first stage of the implementation was to create a project folder that was suitable for development of a WPF application Visual Studio offers the option to create a readymade WPF project
64. iles to be tracked ce harry du Forgot to add ne 59dfa2 by Harry D e ul Added Shifts Trains Workpiece PrepData Shift Train ReliefOpp classes Ta d4d760 by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmail com gt 1 nail com gt 1 15 March 2015 Trying to iteratively create unit UserControls 57658d by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmail com gt 15 03 2015 EE HOME CODE WORK BUILD BUILD PREVIEW TEST SEARCH Explorer History Branches Pull Requests FinalYearProject FinalYearProject commits Commits Branch Updates 74 Path EE lavado by Harry Duce lt narry ducewhotmal com gt 15 05 2015 14 May 2015 added candidateshiftdialog xaml cs to track only timeline to go 068193 by Harry Duce harry duceG hotmail com 14 05 2015 Done all except timeline Mil o1bbb9 by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmail com gt 14 05 2015 12 May 2015 e PEJ Added timeline converters keys d5d627 by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmail com gt 12 05 2015 11 May 2015 HE fixed mousewheel scroll 4df763 by Harry Duce harry duceQ hotmail com 11 05 2015 01 May 2015 WIN Reliefopp and WorkPiece only in one listbox now 291406 by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmail com gt 01 05 2015 o RE Created folders 57c83 by Harry Duce lt harry duce hotmail com gt 01 05 2015 23 April 2015 e RN Added shift display that now displays correct vehicle blocks for selected shift da6al7 by Harry Duce lt harry duce
65. ional list property which contains all the raw data from the Shifts file called al Shifts 3 Within the SaveScheduleToFile method a list of integers called shiftlDs is populated with the ID values of every Shift object contained within the Schedule object s shiftList property 4 A SaveFileDialog is initialised and opened which presents a file browser to the user Microsoft c2015 SaveFileDialog Class 50 5 Once the user has created a file name and pressed Save a StreamWriter is initialised using the created file name 6 The ID values contained within shiftIDs are used as index values to select lists of integers from allShifts 7 The StreamWriter writes the retrieved lists of integers to a new file line by line in an attempt to replicate the format of the shifts files where each line represents a shift 8 The new file created is given the extension schedule Attempts were made to make it possible so that the user could load a saved train crew schedule file back into the application to review a previously created schedule However it became apparent that this would be a lengthy process and with the limited time left it could not realistically be implemented It would have taken a while because it would have required a whole new readFiles method that read in the specific format of the schedule files 4 5 4 Small Additions During the time between the end of implementing the last major functionality of the application and the d
66. is checked and the other for when it is unchecked Microsoft c2015 ToggleButton Class Instead of having two buttons for swapping between viewing the entire train crew schedule and the collection of vehicle blocks for a selected shift the main window has a ToggleButton called ViewShiftViewScheduleToggle that is enabled when the SelectedShift property does not equal null The ToggleButton makes it possible for the user to jump between viewing the full list of vehicle blocks and a subset by doing the following 1 When the user checks ViewShiftViewSchedule Toggle the scheduleStack is emptied of all its children and the VehicleBlock objects that the SelectedShift covers are collected and added to it Hence visually displaying the vehicle blocks covered by the user specified shift 2 When the user unchecks ViewShiftViewSchedule Toggle the scheduleStack is emptied of all its children and every VehicleBlock object from allVehicleBlocks is added to it Hence visually displaying the entire schedule 49 This implementation creates more space in the main window for other components 4 5 2 Loading data files using file browser Up until this point of the implementation the file names of the data sets had been hardcoded into the solution to avoid having to manually search for each file whilst developing However for the final delivery this was not useful as it does not allow the user to load multiple data sets without closing the application and editi
67. l Cost of Shifts in Schedule Minutes 42891 VE in Schedule zur ID N A No of Work Spells in Shift N A_ Colour Of Shift Selected No Shift Selected Selected Shift Data Start Time N A End Time N A Cost Minutes N A Type N A Depot N A Delete Grew f Create New Schedule Crew Schedule S2v Schedule Work Spells Start End Times Timeline 04 00 05 00 0600 07 00 08 00 09 00 10 00 11 00 12 00 1300 1400 1500 1600 17 00 1800 1900 20 00 21 00 22 00 2300 00 00 om 02 00 B Schedule Shifts Train Unit 1101 Location ID Schedule Shifts Train Unit 1101 Location ID Schedule Shifts Load Files Key Relief Opportunity mmm Work Piece wi Work Spell Figure 30 Screen cap showing the finalised main window of the application NT 5 Evaluation 5 1 Comparison to Atif Iqbal s Existing Solution During the taught year of 2013 2014 Atif Iqbal undertook a project called Scheduling Train Crews via a Graphical User Interface project The aim of his project was to develop a software application that generates a train crew schedule and displays it as a visual schedule within a user interface Iqbal 2014 p1 Both solutions are designed to read in the same data file formats The final solution of his project will be compared to the solution produced from this project The comparison is performed to evaluate how each of the solutions handle presenting the large amounts of data involved in train cre
68. l SP l Pl Pi nN 8 e jejejejeje e jejejejejeje 29795 Data for Selected Shift Time of First Departure None Selected Time of Last Arrival None Selected Start Relief Opportunity of Each Work Spell None Selected Work Pieces Covered By Shift None Selected Vehicle Blocks Covered By Shift None Selected Cancel Figure 28 Screen cap of candidateShiftDialog window displaying a list of shifts that can be added to cover WP 16 4 4 3 3 Deleting the entire Crew Schedule Originally not part of the design however this was added as functionality so that if the train planner wanted to build a train crew schedule from scratch this would offer a short cut to deleting all the shifts in the current crew schedule Deleting the crew schedule is achieved as follows 1 The Schedule objects shiftList property is cleared of all of its items 2 The visual schedule is re drawn with no Shift objects to draw This process is instigated when the user presses a button called DeleteCrewScheduleButton within the main window 4 4 3 4 Functionality to generate a new crew schedule With the functionality of deleting the entire crew schedule being added it naturally makes sense to add functionality that allows the user to create a new train crew schedule For example the user deletes the crew schedule so that they can analyse just the ROs and WPs of a data set and then wants to create a new train crew schedule once they
69. l train units available are allocated so that each service and trip is covered Laplagne 2008 p3 Train Crew Scheduling This process allocates each piece of work in the vehicle schedule a crew from the crew shifts available to create a train crew schedule Kwan 2015 A train crew schedule is only valid if every WP is covered by a shift Albers c2009 p38 Rostering This stage occurs in rail operations planning defines the type of work for each member of every crew Albers c2009 p12 Defining Terminology Vehicle Block Represents a section of consecutive pieces of work performed by a train unit over a certain timeframe Laplagne 2008 p13 Vehicle Schedule The set of all vehicle blocks within the scope of a specific timeframe Relief Point A location within a vehicle schedule where is it possible for a crew to be relieved and another to take over Albers c2009 p38 RO A specific time and location within a vehicle block where it is suitable for a crew to be relieved and another crew to take over Kwan 2009 p47 WP Piece of Work The summary of all work performed between 2 consecutive ROs within a vehicle block Therefore within a vehicle block Number of WPs Number of ROs 1 Shift Defines all of the work that a specific crew is to perform within a schedule sF the WPs performed by the train units Candidate Shift A shift that is eligible to be added to a vehicle schedule the vehicle sched
70. led through an algorithm so that a potential schedule can be formed This project aims to provide train planners with a user interface that enables them to visualise and navigate through the data of a potential train crew schedule whilst allowing them to modify a schedule where they see fit in an effort to aid them in minimising costs iv Acknowledgements would like to thank my project supervisor Dr Raymond Kwan for all the advice and expert knowledge he provided throughout the project would also like to thank Professor Kristina Vuskovic for the feedback provided during the progress meeting Table of Contents humi iii ele ke D E iv Table of Kotteng heen Petites V EE 1 1 IntFOdUuctlon EE 2 1 1 Problem n LEE 2 TE E EE 2 1 9 Project Plan iie e e e e adulescens e nal eect eR Re pu eue 2 1 4 Minimum Ge TE t soe eet Pre oer Pret FO ea E eet Er ae ne 3 1 4 1 Possible extensions Aaen EA eege tege Paddested usado 3 1 5 Selected Methodology for this Prolect 3 1 51 En EE 3 1 52 PIOLOQDITIO Rese nen E aa rrr ETO E LLL i E dE 4 1 5 3 Iterative Waterfall Development 4 1 5 4 Selected Methodology EE 4 1 6 Relevance Re LEE 4 DPA Project ET m 5 1 8 Structure of Report oo i aeo iov eq e aen a a eed LAE d 5 2 Background Research eret tenecr intentare ttm ERE In In Ro Roca EE EE IR Ra Ran 6 2 1 Introduction usce rr epe ete ette Pa eq Mete Fallece 6 2 2 Planning of Rail OBSIPAtIOris s oet bee
71. lock objects AAA 40 4 4 2 3 Displaying Collection of VehicleBlock objects 40 4 4 3 Enabling the user to modify the schedule 42 4 4 3 1 Deleting a Shift ice eme n eR 42 4 4 3 2 Adding a Slt oe e ete Fendt tee otal Proust one beg optat adt 42 4 4 3 3 Deleting the entire Crew Schedule 44 4 4 3 4 Functionality to generate a new crew schedule 44 4 4 4 Iteration 4 User Evaluation seseeeme 45 4 4 4 1 Structure PME 46 4 4 4 2 Feedback aco eee pete emp ka eie nre 46 4 44 3 SOMES EE 47 AB MCT e EE 48 4 5 1 Implementing the ToggleButton AAA 48 4 5 2 Loading data files using file browser ssssssssseneeessssrsrerrrneessee 49 4 5 3 Saving the Train Crew Schedule to a file 49 4 5 4 Small Additlons E Ee SEI det eee 50 AS 5 fferatori 5 EE 50 5b Evaluation pepe are eoa Eee 52 5 1 Comparison to Atif Iqbal s Existing Solution 52 5 1 1 Summary of functionalities of Iqbal s solution 52 5 1 2 Critique of Iqbal s solution compared to the solution of this project53 5 13 CONCUSSION eessen MAT 56 Viii 5 2 ET EE 56 5 2 1 Functionality Evaluation decre FE me obe e ER et t 57 Bi 2 Peed bat EE 57 BAS COMCUIS Op dette Du url 57 5 3 Self Ev luallon teehee e roe eels ed tat mel E 58 5 3
72. loop moves onto the next iteration 4 1 2 2 2 WorkPieces Class The WorkPieces constructor takes multiple parameter arguments from the HawData object as well as the list of all ReliefOpp objects AllReliefOpps new WorkPiece object is initialised for every pair of ROs next to each other within a vehicle block This is achieved by 1 Aforloop that iterates over every vehicle block 2 Aninner for loop that iterates over every RO within the vehicle block except for the last This is due to the last RO of every vehicle block not having a corresponding WP because it is the end of a vehicle block 3 WorkPiece objects are initialised within the inner loop This follows the rule that the number of WPs in a vehicle block is always equal to the number of ROs in a vehicle block minus 1 outlined in section 2 2 1 28 The WorkPiece class files constructor takes three parameter arguments the ID of the WorkPiece and the start and end ReliefOpp objects of the WorkPiece The start and finish times of a WP are defined by the departure time of the start RO and the arrival time of the end RO respectively The duration property is calculated by subtracting the start time from the finish time The start and end ReliefOpp objects are also stored as properties for each WorkPiece object When each WorkPiece is initialised within the inner for loop the start ReliefOpp object has its AddWorkPiece method called It takes the WorkPiece object as a parameter
73. m collected and easy to access throughout the rest of the application The rationale for splitting the process into three was that it was clear that the code was becoming hard to follow which would make it difficult to find and edit if needed later on in the project Splitting the process made it easier to find the desired code that might need to be changed 4 1 2 2 1 ReliefOpportunities Class The purpose of this class was to initialise and populate ReliefOpp objects using values from the stored data within RawData and then then collect them all into the class s list of ReliefOpp objects property called A lReliefOpps The process that achieved this was as follows For loop iterates over the number of ROs in the data set 1 ReliefOpp objects are initialised within each iteration of the loop Five parameter arguments are passed through containing the data for the following properties of a RO ID number arrival time departure time train unit ID and the location ID These values are retrieved from lists using the count value of the for loop 2 Aninner for loop iterates over the number of vehicle blocks 3 Anif statement checks if the ReliefOpp objects ID value is less than or equal to the last RO on each vehicle block If it is then the ReliefOpp object is assigned the count value of the inner for loop and the for loop breaks This value is the vehicle block that the RO is contained within 4 The RO is then appended to Al ReliefOpps and the
74. mprovements to the application The purpose was to test the ease of understanding and navigating through the user interface A University of Leeds MEng Computer Science student was chosen based on the criteria that from their taught studies they would have the knowledge to critically evaluated the software application The user had no prior knowledge of train crew scheduling The full user evaluation form with the written answers included can be found in Appendix D 46 Key Relief Opportunity Work Piece Work Spell Shift ID N A Number of Work Spells N A Cost Minutes N A Type N A Figure 29 Screen crap of the applications main window whilst user evaluation took place 4 4 4 1 Structure The user evaluation was split into three stages 1 5 minutes was spent by the user familiarising themselves with the application 2 The user performed 7 tasks within the user interface and recorded their results These tasks were designed so that the user would have to use all functionalities of the user interface Each task was performed and the results given were all correct 3 The user then gave feedback by answering 4 questions 4 4 4 2 Feedback The feedback given by the user when asked each question was as follows 1 Is the application easy to understand Not really because don t know what any of the train schedule specific words mean but when asked to find a specific thing it was us
75. n workSpells are exhausted the outermost for loop moves onto the new vehicle block and stackedRows 2D list is added to the 3D list which is a property of the Schedule class type List lt WorkSpell gt NE List lt List lt WorkSpell gt e o o e e o Figure 22 Diagram created to help visualise the three dimensional list of WSs 96 compares this workspell to another to see if they overlap True is returned if the Workspells overlap public bool OverlapsWith WorkSpell other return this startTime lt other endTime amp amp other startTime lt this endTime Figure 23 Snippet of code that compares two WS objects to see if they overlap True value is returned if they do A new UserControl class called WorkSpellRow was created with its content property being a ListBox that s ItemPanel is a Canvas The purpose of this WorkSpellRow is so that a ListBox can be iteratively created for every row of WorkSpell objects defined by the 3D list and then stacked on top of each other to create vertical separation in the visual display This is done by adding each WorkSpellRow object to a StackPanel that is contained within the Grid of the VehicleBlock class at cell row 1 column 2 The height of the VehicleBlock UserControl is set to be automatically created based on the height of the components it contains This allows for in theory
76. ng the code The process of enabling the user to select files from local storage is as follows 1 The process is instigated when the user clicks the LoadFilesButton from within the main window The main windows getDataFileNames method is called A file browser is presented to the user asking them to select a trains file The returned file name is stored to a list of strings called fileNames a P ro N Another file browser is presented to the user asking them to select the corresponding shifts file The returned file name is appended to fileNames N D The main windows run method is called and fileNames is passed as a parameter argument Within run is where the RawData object is initialised which starts the entire process of reading in the data using the file names collecting it and displaying it 4 5 3 Saving the Train Crew Schedule to a file Enabling the user to save a train crew schedule to a file opens up the possibility that the application can produce an output that could be used within another part of the planning of rail services operation e g Rostering Discussed in section 2 2 The process of saving the current crew schedule is as follows 1 The process begins when the user clicks a button called SaveScheduleButton that is contained in the main window 2 The buttons click event handler calls a method on the Schedule object called SaveScheduleToFile and passes the Shifts object section 4 1 2 1 2 that has a 2 dimens
77. nging a StackPanels contents automatically causes the user interface to update the display with the new contents This solution was preferred for two reasons no new memory had to be allocated to and it kept the visualisation of the schedule to within the same window Modifications had to be made to the initial design of this functionality so that the chosen solution could be implemented into the application sensibly The changes were The shiftVehicleBlocks list had become redundant due to the VehicleBlock objects no longer being passed to a new window It was removed and the VehicleBlock objects that the SelectedShift object covers are collected directly into the scheduleStack The labels that were to display property values of the selected shift in the initial design Figure 16 were moved into the main window When a visual WS is selected the Shift object passed from the WorkSpellRow UserControl is stored into the main windows SelectedShift The labels for the specific values of a shift are populated using the Se ectedShift object Therefore the process of visually collecting the VehicleBlock objects does not occur when a WS is selected by the user Instead the main window has two buttons ViewShiftButton and ViewFullScheduleButton When the SelectedShift property equals null both buttons are disabled The buttons have the following functionally o ViewShiftButton When SelectedShift is assigned a Shift object i e the user sel
78. nted algorithm enables to create new crew schedules and to compare them since properties are displayed Is the application easy to understand Very easy Did you find it easy to navigate through the data Yes They are graphically depicted which also facilitates their comprehension ss Is the application visually pleasing Yes Different colours indicate different shifts and different options allow to highlight desired properties How do you think the application could be It could be improved if the saved data can be improved loaded graphically Different colours for different shifts would make them easier to differentiate However it is solved since whenever one clicks a shift just those work spells belonging to this shift are highlighted 71 Appendix D Completed User Evaluation Form That Was Performed During the Implementation Instructions 1 Spend 5 minutes to gain an understanding of the user interface 2 Perform the tasks presented in the Tasks section 3 Answer the questions in the FeedBack section Tasks Whatis the total cost of the crew schedule 40424 2 Find what time Train Unit 1202 ends its work at and record the value here 1654 3 Find the identification numbers for the shifts covering Train Unit 1391 and record the values here 11733 11690 425 4 Delete all shifts covering Train Unit 1391 and then add shifts to cover both its pieces of
79. oid visual WSs overlapping Iqbal s solution creates a new row for every different shift within a vehicle block The method created to avoid visual WSs overlapping in this projects solution is to only add new rows fora WS component to be contained in if there is no row available that already exists where the WS will not be overlapped in This saves space by reducing the amount of rows having to be created whereas Iqbal s solution makes no effort to save space Therefore as the data set size increases Iqbal s schedule size will increase at a higher rate than this solutions 2 Adding a shift to the schedule When adding a shift to a train crew schedule in Iqbal s solution the user is given no information about the shift to be added except for the ID value of the shift and the ID value of one of the WPs that the shift will cover When adding a shift to a train crew schedule using this projects solution all the properties of a shift from within the data files are presented to the user Therefore a train planner would be able to make a more informed decision on what the properties are of a shift they are considering to add to a train crew schedule when using this projects solutions What neither of the solutions do is allow the user to view a single list that contains all of the candidates shifts that are within the data files 3 Deleting a shift from the schedule Deleting a shift in Iqbal s solution comes with the same problems as adding a shift no
80. ollected into a list of lists from the sorted list The method used to achieve this was similar to the method that organised the ReliefOpp objects into their respective vehicle blocks by using a skipValue discussed in section 4 2 1 3 The outer list represented the vehicle block that each list of WorkSpell objects was collected into A for loop iterates over the lists of WorkSpell objects called workSpells that define which vehicle block each WS is contained within A 2 dimensional list of WorkSpell objects called stackedRows is initialised as empty stackedRows can also be visualised from observing Figure 22 Its outer list will represents the rows stacked on top of each other and its inner list will contain the WorkSpell objects contained within each row An inner for loop iterates over every WorkSpell object within workSpells The stackedRows 2D list cycles through each WorkSpell object contained in each of its rows and compares them to the current WorkSpell object to see if their time value properties overlap Code that compares time values can be seen in Figure 23 If the current WorkSpell does not overlap with any other WorkSpell object in a row of stackedRows then it is added to that row If the current WorkSpell object overlaps with another WorkSpell object in all of the existing rows in stackedRows then a new row is created and added to stackedHows and the current WorkSpell is added to the new empty row Once all the WorkSpell objects withi
81. omise the ListBox that contained the circle objects is displayed in Figure 13 below The collection of Circle objects that was to be visually displayed was bound to the ListBox in the application logic using its temsSource property lt Experimentation With ListBoxs gt lt ListBox Name CirclesListBox BorderThickness Height 50 lt ListBox ItemContainerStyle gt lt Style TargetType x Type ListBoxItem gt Setter Property Canvas Left Value Binding positionValue gt Setter Property Canvas Top Value 5 gt lt Style gt lt ListBox ItemContainerStyle gt lt ListBox ItemsPanel gt lt Defines the ListBox s ItemsPanel property gt lt ItemsPanelTemplate gt lt Canvas gt lt ItemsPanelTemplate gt lt ListBox ItemsPanel gt lt Defines the ListBox s ItemsTemplate property gt lt ListBox ItemTemplate gt lt DataTemplate gt lt Ellipse Fill Black Width 12 Height 12 gt lt DataTemplate gt lt ListBox ItemTemplate gt lt ListBox gt Figure 13 Code used to create and customise the ListBox containing circle items Comments are included to outline what was discussed in 3 3 2 2 1 The results were a success as can be seen in Figure 14 which displays the graphical output Crew Scheduler 2 6 X Figure 14 Screen cap of ListBox with Canvas template being executed 21 3 3 4 Main Window The main window of the application will cont
82. on that was designed to make them use all of the applications functions The expected result was given in one column and the user documented the actual result in the column next to it 4 The user then gave feedback by answering previously prepared questions a5 ps 5 2 1 Functionality Evaluation Each functionality of the software application performed as expected during the user evaluation The original template containing the users answers to this section as well as the feedback section can be found in Appendix C 5 2 2 Feedback Overall the feedback given was very positive The answers to each question are as follows Question 1 Do you think the application offers a good solution to the problem Answer 1 Yes it does provide a good interface that allows modification of crew schedules in a feasible way The user does not need to check for feasibility but the application does Moreover the implemented algorithm enables to create new crew schedules and to compare them since properties are displayed Question 2 Is the application easy to understand Answer 2 Very easy Question 3 Did you find it easy to navigate through the data Answer 3 Yes They are graphically depicted which also facilitates their comprehension Question 4 Is the application visually pleasing Answer 4 Yes Different colours indicate different shifts and different options allow to highlight desired properties Question 5 How do you
83. on the project the final solution is compared to the minimum requirements and possible extensions that were created at the outset of the project Then a discussion on what would be done differently if the project was to be undertaken again 5 3 1 Minimum Requirements 1 Head and prepare the data that describes a daily train crew schedule into a sensible class structure The class structure and data storage that was developed at the start of the implementation stage eased the process of adding functionalities throughout the rest of the implementation due to property values being easy to locate and access The addition of the WS class type made displaying the shifts within the visual schedule possible Therefore this minimum requirement was met 2 Asoftware system which uses the prepared data to create a visual display of a train crew schedule that is contained within a graphical user interface The software solution creates a visual train crew schedule that is compiled of the components discovered and defined during the background reading stage of the project The quality of the visual schedule is validated by the feedback from the end of project user evaluation 3 Allow navigation through the train crew schedules data via user interaction with the visual display Through the use of the ListBox class of WPF the visual display can be interacted with by the user The user can select components to view their specific property values collect s
84. ontrasting colours to represent that they are part of a different crew shift 16 gess Vehicle Block 2 Vehicle Block 3 e Vehicle Block 4 Figure 10 Design displaying stacked vehicle blocks forming a schedule As is discussed above a train crew schedule can be visually formed by stacking vehicle blocks directly on top of each other this is shown in Figure 10 Listed below are some examples of what can be determined from the data being displayed in Figure 10 that would be useful for a train planner e Which WPs and vehicle blocks a shift covers e The number of RO s and WP s within each vehicle block e The ascending order of vehicle block start times What cannot be determined from the data being displayed are the actual time values that each component represents for example the actual start time of vehicle block 1 3 3 2 1 Visual Timeline As is discussed in the above section the left and right end of the containers define the period of time that the entire train crew schedule takes place within Therefore for the time values of each component to be determined by the user through visual representation a timeline that displays the time frame of the vehicle schedule is required A sensible time frame for a daily schedule was taken to be 26 hours starting at 00 00 and ending at 02 00 the next day the extra two hours added on to cover for WPs that run over into the early hours of the morning However upon reviewing the
85. opriate software tools to develop the application based on the basic blueprint already created 3 e Begin development of the designed application following the work schedule e If time allows attempt possible extensions e Evaluate the final application 1 4 Minimum Requirements The minimum requirements for the solution of this project are 1 Read and prepare the data that describes a daily train crew schedule into a sensible class structure 2 Asoftware system which uses the prepared data to create a visual display of a train crew schedule that is contained within a graphical user interface 3 Allow navigation through the train crew schedules data via user interaction with the visual display 4 Enable the user to modify the schedule e g by adding and deleting shifts 1 4 1 Possible extensions e The application lets the user save the crew schedule to a file e Implement 3D graphics into the visual schedule display e Improve an algorithm used to generate crew schedules 1 5 Selected Methodology for this Project Development methodologies define a framework that is used to form a plan of action for a software project There is a wide array of methodologies each with their own characteristics that make them suitable for some projects and not others Choosing a methodology for a project influences which how and in what order processes are performed therefore the choice can potentially negatively impact the quality of the solution which
86. ortant that the container that the visual vehicle blocks components were drawn within had a constant width 80 2 so that time could be measured consistently Therefore a Grid class was used to structure the layout of the VehicleBlock UserControl to allow the developer to create rows and columns and define their height and width respectively The grid had three columns and two rows the first column displayed the vehicle block id value and the second contained the visual vehicle block within which were the ListBox classes that were to draw the ReliefOpp WorkPiece and Shift objects The third columns sole purpose is to add padding to that the visual schedule is never overlapped by the scroll bar 4 2 1 1 Initialising and stacking Vehicle Blocks To visually form the entire schedule the VehicleBlock objects had to be directly stacked on top of each other so that their horizontal positions were the same WPF has a Container Control called StackPanel which can be used to vertically place controls on top of or below each other Microsoft c2015 StackPanel Class A StackPanel called scheduleStack is contained within MainWindow and is populated with each VehicleBlock object The children of a StackPanel are displayed automatically when the application is executed The StackPanel was contained within a ScrollViewer object that enables scrolling through StackPanel containers content Figure 19 Executed application displaying stacked Vehicl
87. ot take attention away from the main visual schedule The window is initialised within the OpenReliefOppDialog method discussed in the previous section and is passed the ReliefOpp and WorkPiece objects that have already been initialised and assigned values to The constructor then assigns the data values of the ReliefOpp object and WorkPiece object if one exists to the appropriate label s content property so that it can be displayed in the window If the WorkPiece has the value null then the corresponding labels display N A Hence creating a new window that displays the data values of the retrieved ReliefOpp object and its corresponding WorkPiece object if one exists 4 Relief Opportunity 10 cji 2 Relief Opportunity 10 Work Piece 10 Arrive Time 897 Start Time 897 Departure Time 897 End Time 960 Train Unit ID 1101 Duration 63 Location ID 2 Cover Count 1 Figure 26 Screen cap of ReliefOppDisplay window displaying the data for a user specified RO and WP 4 3 2 Iteration 3 Progress Meeting Feedback During the 7 week of the projects timeline a progress meeting was held with supervisor Dr Raymond Kwan and assessor Professor Kristina Vuskovic with the purpose of giving feedback on the work performed so far The feedback given centred around the difficulty of understanding the visual representation of the train crew schedule i e its appearance was to abstract 4 3 2 1 Resultant Modifications Modifications we
88. pu School of Computing FACULTY OF ENGINEERING UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS Train Crew Schedule Information System Harry Patrick Duce Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of BSc Computer Science 2014 2015 The candidate confirms that the following have been submitted Items Format Recipient s and Date Deliverable 1 Report SSO 03 06 2015 Participant consent forms Signed forms in envelop SSO 03 06 2015 Deliverable 2 Software Application Code Emailed to supervisor and assessor 02 06 2015 Deliverable 3 Data Sets Emailed to supervisor and assessor 02 06 2015 Deliverable 4 User manual Emailed to assessor and supervisor 02 06 2015 Type of Project Exploratory Software ESW The candidate confirms that the work submitted is their own and the appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others understand that failure to attribute material which is obtained from another source may be considered as plagiarism Signature of student 2015 The University of Leeds Harry Patrick Duce Summary A train planners role when processing a train crew schedule is to minimise costs whilst meeting the constraints of the process Train crew scheduling involves handling masses of data relating to the train journeys that have already been defined and the potential crew shifts that are available to be added to the schedule The data is funnel
89. r startReliefOppld property This means that the list of integers lastReliefOpportunityOnVeh defined in 4 2 1 3 can be used to collect the WorkSpell objects into the vehicle blocks they cover The problem with this process was that no account was taken of the possibility of overlapping WSs in a crew schedule When the program was run the WorkSpell objects were correctly collected into the ListBox s of each VehicleBlock object and the horizontal positioning and width of the visual WSs was also correct However some of the visual WSs could not be seen or selected due to them being overlapped by other WSs that also cover the same vehicle block for at least some of the same time What was required was to somehow modify the vertical position of were a WS is placed within a VehicleBlock object so that it would not visually overlap with any other WS A three dimensional 3D list of WorkSpell objects was initialised The outer list represented the vehicle blocks in the schedule the list of lists represented the stack that overlapping WSs are split between by putting them into lists of WorkSpell objects Figure 22 below was created to help visualise the 3D list The process of splitting all the WorkSpell objects into 35 the 3D list was achieved using the following process which starts from when the WorkSpell objects have been order by their startReliefOppld propert value T List lt List lt List lt WorkSpell gt All the WS objects were c
90. re made to the visual schedule in an attempt to make it easier to understand these were as follows e A visual key was added to the main window that showed what each shape represents in the train crew schedule e Labels were added to the visual vehicle block to give components more meaning o Alabel below each RO containing its location value 0 o Two labels on the far left side of the VehicleBlock UserControl that gives guidance to the user as to where the shifts are being displayed and that the value under each RO is its location id The visual timeline was still due to be added which would add further context to the visual schedule Keys e Relief Opportunity Work Piece Work Spell Figure 27 Visual key added to the main window 4 4 Iteration 4 4 4 1 Visual Timeline To visually display the timeline of the schedule a TimeLine UserControl is created Its ContentControl is a Grid that defines three columns each the exact same width as the columns of the VehicleBlock UserControl s This is so that when the TimeLine object is added to the scheduleStack it will perfectly aligned with each VehicleBlock object added after it Within the second column of TimeLine s Grid is a Canvas container called timeLineCanvas When the application is executed and the visual display is being created the timeLineCanvas is populated with labels positioned at every hour mark within the visual schedule The content of each label is the hour of
91. ress Ok button File browser opens OK 3 Find and Open DS2 trains file Message box saying OK from within DS2 folder on Select the corresponding memory stick Shifts file appears 4 Press OK button File browser opens OK 5 Find and Open DS2 shifts file A visual schedule is OK from within DS2 folder on drawn into the main memory stick window Test Purpose Delete Crew Schedule 1 Press Delete Crew Schedule All visual work spells are OK Button removed from the schedule Test Purpose Create new Crew Schedule 66 1 Press Create New Crew A new set of visual work OK Schedule Button spells are added to the schedule Test Purpose View details of a specific shift 1 Click on a visual work spell Vehicle blocks that are OK covered by the selected shift are drawn a different colour Labels at the top of the window are populated with data of the selected shift Test Purpose Visually group vehicle blocks that are covered by the selected shift 1 Press Group Vehicle Blocks Vehicle blocks covered OK Containing Shift button by the selected shift are visually collected Test Purpose Swap back to viewing the full schedule 1 Press Back to Full Schedule The full schedule is OK button redrawn into the window Test Purpose View a list of the shifts contained within the crew schedule 1 Press View List of Shifts in N
92. s which is a property of a Shift object The 2 dimensional list in simpler terms details when each WS of a shift starts and finishes 6 The identification values used in the previous step are used again to create an inner inner loop that iterates over the ROs that the WS covers except for the last 7 Each Shift has a workPiecelnstancesCovered property that is a list of WorkPiece objects The WorkPiece object contained in each ReliefOpp object that is iterated over within the inner inner for loop is then added to the workPiecelnstancesCovered list The Shift is then added to the WorkPiece 29 objects choiceShifts property a list of Shift objects that represents the shifts that provide cover for the WP 8 The Shift object is then added to AllShifts 4 1 2 3 Schedule Class The Schedule class contains the train crew schedule in the form of a list of Shift objects The Schedule object is initialised in the main window by calling a method from the PrepareData class named CreateScheduleMaxCovGain Within this method is an algorithm used to generate a list of Shift objects so that every WP is covered by at least one shift whilst also attempting to minimise the amount of overcovering As is stated in 2 4 1 one of the algorithms within the GreedyHeuristics program should be used within the project solution simply as a tool for generating an initial list of Shift objects that can be displayed in the visual train crew schedule Due to the limited
93. sitioning of selectable shapes that are created via data objects and placed within a visual container As is discussed in section 2 5 based on 19 the minimum requirements C with the Qt framework was the most suitable candidate for the programming language to be used in the implementation Therefore the search for the desired software functionality began with the different Qt Containers that enable developers to have control over visual objects within a form Qt c2015 Upon reviewing each container type it was concluded that none would be suitable due to the lack of being able to position objects absolutely within them This led to searching for alternative GUI frameworks that did offer such functionality 3 3 3 1 Windows Presentation Foundation Windows Presentation Foundation WPF is a presentation system used in Windows based applications for rendering graphical user interfaces Discussed below are potentially useful properties of WPF that could be used together to achieve the desired selectable shapes functionality e Control Class Defines the properties and methods shared between all components that use a ControlTemplate to determine their graphical presentation Microsoft c2015 Control Class e Canvas Class A container control derived from the Panel Class that allows developers to position controls within the container absolutely using coordinate values Microsoft c2015 Introduction to WPF Microsoft c2015 WPF Contain
94. that was made once the extension was granted for the project 1 8 Structure of Report The report is split into sections that explain the project as it took place e Background Research Details the reading and review of materials that took place throughout the project e Design of Application Explains the process of designing a user interface and class structure for an application using acquired knowledge from background reading and past studies Also explains the reasoning behind why certain software development tools were decided upon e Implementation Describes the development process of the designed software application e Evaluation Describes the evaluation processes that were performed to gauge an understanding of the success of the solution 2 Background Research 2 1 Introduction This section outlines the background information that was gathered and studied to help gain an expert understanding of the problem Definitions of key terminology used throughout the project are outlined an alternative solution is studied and development tools are discussed within 2 2 Planning of Rail Operations There are four general stages involved in the process of planning of rail operations 1 2 2 1 Timetabling The initial stage in the planning of rail operations where a timetable is created that is compiled of services and trips Laplagne 2008 p3 Vehicle Scheduling The second stage of planning where al
95. the data sets are hardcoded into the initialisation of the RawData object for ease of use whilst developing 4 1 2 2 Initialising ReliefOpp WorkPiece and Shift Objects The next step in the data handling process was to organise the stored trains and shifts data into objects that represent the components of a train crew schedule This involves creating an object for all of the ROs WPs and shifts that are detailed in the data sets and grouping them into three lists A ReliefOpps AllWorkPieces and AllShifts The lists made the objects easy to transport and access throughout the application According to the design this entire process was to be contained in the constructor of the PrepareData class which would take a RawData object as its single parameter and use the stored raw data to create and assign values to each object However it became apparent while implementing the design that it would be far more practical to split the process into three different class files One file designated to creating and collecting all ReliefOpp objects called ReliefOpportunities another to creating and collecting all WorkPiece objects called WorkPieces and the final to creating and collecting all Shift objects called CandidateShifts These new class types would be initialised within PrepareData where the relevant properties of the RawData object would be passed as parameters The objects were stored as 207 2 properties of the PrepareData class which kept the
96. ts WSs c Iqbal s application displays WPs as separate charts stacked on top of each other For large data sets it would become increasingly difficult to visualise the data due to the build up of the number of stacked charts as the number of WPs increased This project s solution avoids this problem by condensing crew schedule components into vehicle blocks and instead of displaying all of their property values within the visual display they can be accessed by interacting with the components This means that as the size of the data set increases Iqbal s visual schedule size increases at a much higher rate than the visual schedule of this project To give an idea of the difference between the behaviour of the two applications as the data set sizes increase the number of visual blocks added to the schedule per WP when switching between using DS1 and DS2 has been calculated Figure 25 In Iqbal s solution the number of visual blocks added per WP is 1 due to each block representing a unique WP To calculate the number of blocks added per WP within this projects solution we must first calculate the difference between the number of vehicle blocks of each data set due to the number of blocks drawn into the visual representation being equal to the number of vehicle blocks in the data set 47 3 44 Then calculate the average number of WPs per vehicle block from data sets 1 and 2 22 2 260 47 2 8 265 Then divide the number of WPs
97. ually not too hard 2 Did you find it easy to navigate through the data No because the buttons to select work pieces and shifts were too hard to click too small The buttons should be bigger vertically and provide better feedback when clicked More visual feedback should be shown when selecting work shifts because at present the transition is not noticeable enough It was also tedious trying to find a specific work piece Some of the work pieces could not be clicked on due to their being too small 3 Is the application visually pleasing 47 The application does not resize properly and the application does not look native to the platform However the colours for the work pieces look nice 4 4 4 3 4 How do you think the application could be improved Make it easier to find a specific shift Make the buttons easier to click by making them bigger Highlight all work spells of the same shift when one is selected Provide better visual feedback when selecting a work shift Make the window resize better An undo button Zoom function When view shift is selected show which shift is enabled Double clicking on a shift should view that shift Some sort of toggle button to swap between viewing shift and schedule Conclusion Based on the feedback of the user evaluation and the time left available to spend working on the software application a list of modifications was compiled that were to be made within th
98. ule in question WS These are the portions of time within a shift that a crew will spend actually working splitting the shifts up by breaks A shift can be made up of multiple WSs Train Crew Schedule A vehicle schedule that has been allocated shifts to cover Overcovering A WP is overcovered when more than one shift in a crew schedule is set to cover it The ultimate aim is to produce a crew schedule where every WP is covered by one crew exactly however a schedule is still valid even with overcovering Excess crew members can ride the vehicle as passengers Laplagne 2008 p15 2 2 2 Train Crew Scheduling vehicle 1 shift 1 spell 1 A A I I vehicle 2 I I I I shift 2 1 spell I I I vehicle 3 ul B shift 3 spell 1 shift 4 1 spell Figure 3 A representation of a train crew schedule Laplagne 2008 p15 The train crew schedule above consists of three vehicle blocks The horizontal black lines represent the timeline of the trips and services performed by each vehicle The square shapes placed along the black lines each represent a RO The ROs split the black lines up into WPs A label is attached to each RO that displays the location value The coloured horizontal lines each represent a WS the colour defines what shift the WS belongs too There are four shifts and six WSs being displayed The coloured lines stretch along the vehicle lines visualising where and when the crew will start and end th
99. valuation stage were overall positive The software application provides an overall better solution to the problem than the pre existing solution that was compared to The feedback provided by the user who had background knowledge in Railway Planning was very positive and all of the minimum requirements were met Had time been managed more efficiently at the beginning of the project then it is likely that there would have been time to add some of the features listed in section 5 4 Overall am pleased with the solution that have produced 61 List of References Albers M c2009 Models Methods and Applications Freight Railway Crew Scheduling 1 CENTERS for MEDICARE amp MEDICAID SERVICES 2008 SELECTING A DEVELOPMENT APPROACH 1 Introduction p1 Iqbal A 2014 Scheduling Train Crews via a Graphical User Interface 1 Jaksmata 2008 Combo box Available http en wikipedia org wiki Combo box Last accessed 25th May 2015 Kwan R 2009 Case studies of successful train crew scheduling optimization 1 2 p47 Laplagne 2008 Train Driver Scheduling with Windows of RO s 1 Maheshwari S and Jain D 2012 A Comparative Analysis of Different types of Models in Software Development Life Cycle International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering 2 5 IM p286 Microsoft c2015 Control Class Available https msdn microsoft com en us library
100. w scheduling and what functionalities each solution offers to the user Iqbal s project was performed in the same timeframe as this project therefore comparing the two solutions will help gain an understanding of the quality of this solution 5 1 1 Summary of functionalities of Iqbal s solution First a brief summary of the main functionalities of Iqbal s application that can be compared to the functionalities of this projects solution 1 Iqbal s solution gives the user the option to view a generated train crew schedule in terms of either Train Units Vehicle Blocks or WP components a Train Units The schedule is split into visual vehicle blocks that have identical widths and are directly stacked on top of each other Each vehicle block is a bar chart with the X axis displaying the identification value of each RO and the Y axis displaying shift ID values Each RO item displayed along the X axis is equidistant from each other The rows created from the Y values represent a specific shift that is covering some part of the vehicle block The bar chart contains horizontal rectangles that represent WSs Each has a specific colour to distinguish it from others that are not part of the same shift within the same vehicle block Iqbal 2014 p39 b Work Pieces The schedule is split into visual WPs that are stacked on top of each other Each visual WP s width is defined by the duration of the WP it represents in the data The start and end times of
101. w will be copied over and displayed in the new window There will also be fields where the property values of the shift will appear e g cost e D Selected Shift Window 00 00 00 00 03 00 Vehicle block 1 Vehicle Block 4 Shift ID 4 Shift Cost 100 Start Time 05 00 End Time 02 50 Depot 1 Type 2 Figure 16 Design of interface for the user specified shift window Figure 16 displays the outcome of what will happen when the user selects the red shift in Figure 15 The shift covers vehicle blocks 1 and 4 which can be seen grouped together above Property values of the shift are displayed in cells below 3 4 Software Development Tools 3 4 4 Programming Language Prior to the design process C was decided to be the most suitable programming language for the implementation of the project based on the minimum requirements discussed in section 2 5 However due to being unsuccessful in attempts to find certain functionalities within the Qt framework C was discarded as a potential programming language The successful experimentation using WPF and C that is explained in section 3 3 3 2 led to them becoming the most likely candidates to be chosen for the project However as is outlined in section 3 3 2 to create a visual schedule vehicle blocks will need to be iteratively created and stacked on top of each other Vehicle blocks will be built up of multiple graphical components therefore there needs to be a w
102. work so that the overall cost of shifts covering Train Unit 1391 is less than 600 record their ID values here 22 425 5 Find and record the cover count of work piece 241 1 6 Add Shift 49167 to work piece 11 and record all the Train Units it covers 1203 1101 1107 7 Calculate the entire cost of shifts covering train unit 1105 1969 Feedback 1 Is the application easy to understand Not really because don t know what any of the train schedule specific words mean but when asked to find a specific thing it was usually not too hard 2 Did you find it easy to navigate through the data No because the buttons to select work pieces and shifts were too hard to click too small The buttons should be bigger vertically and provide better feedback when clicked More visual feedback should be shown when selecting work shifts because at present the transition is not noticeable enough It was also tedious trying to find a specific work piece Some of the work pieces could not be clicked on due to their being too small 3 Is the application visually pleasing i29 The application does not resize properly and the application does not look native to the platform However the colours for the work pieces look nice 4 How do you think the application could be improved Make it easier to find a specific shift Make the buttons easier to click by making them bigger Highlight all work spells of the same shift when one is selected Provide

DUCE, Harry - VLE - University of Leeds

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