1. Prepare your data

Generation is only as good as the data behind it. Before you click Create Timetable, make sure vPlan has the complete picture:

Departments exist and each section belongs to one.
Courses are linked to the correct department and section.
Instructors are on file and mapped to their subjects (see Faculty & Subject Mapping).
Rooms are added — you can share rooms across departments.
Meeting times reflect your actual college day.

Tip: You can filter generation to a single department, so the solver only schedules that department's sections, courses, and instructors.

2. Open Create Timetable

From the dashboard sidebar, click Create Timetable (keyboard shortcut: Cmd/Ctrl + N). You'll land on the timetable configuration screen.

Now tell vPlan what your college week looks like:

Working days — select Monday through Friday, and decide Saturday's policy. Many VTU colleges run an alternate Saturday; vPlan has a dedicated option for exactly that.
Time slots — confirm the daily teaching slots match your bell times.
Department filter — choose All departments for a college-wide schedule, or pick one department.
Lunch / breaks — vPlan respects your break slots so a class is never split across lunch.

Every choice you make here feeds straight into the solver, so be deliberate — this is the config that defines the whole schedule.

Before generating, drop in your holidays so the solver never assigns a class to a festival, exam, or college event:

Open Holidays from the sidebar.
Add individual dates, or upload your college holiday calendar as a PDF — vPlan extracts the dates automatically.
Add a batch of dates at once for long festival breaks.
Dates you add are linked to the timetable config, so the next generation skips them automatically.

This is the satisfying part. Click Generate and vPlan runs its constraint solver:

It reads every section, course, instructor, room, and slot you configured.
It applies the hard rules — no two classes in one room, no instructor in two rooms, no section double-booked, no classes on holidays.
It produces a complete assignment, usually in seconds.

For big college-wide schedules, generation runs in the background and shows you live progress — step by step — so you always know what's happening.

vPlan is built so conflicts are hard to create and easy to resolve. After generation:

Open the generated timetable view to see every section's week at a glance.
Switch to the faculty timetable to confirm each instructor's week has no overlaps.
If something can't be placed, vPlan tells you exactly why — e.g. "No room available for CSE-301 on Monday 11:30–12:30." Fix the data (add a room, shift a slot) and regenerate.

Once you're happy, get it in front of students and staff: