Hi,<div><br></div><div>I am new to Drools and Drools Planner, so apologies if I am asking anything obvious.</div><div><br></div><div>My objective is to implement a simple (for now) planner which schedules tasks according to 2 main criteria:</div>

<div>- Their duration (in seconds)</div><div>- Their dependencies on other tasks (e.g. Hard Constraint that Task B has to start between 180 and 200 seconds after Task A finishes).</div><div><br></div><div>Since there are gaps between dependent tasks as part of the hard constraints other tasks can be fitted in between dependent tasks.</div>

<div>So the Solver needs to find the optimal start time for each task that satisfies the hard constraints, and in the shortest total timeline possible to complete all tasks (soft constraint).</div><div><br></div><div>The main problem I am finding is that this start time, which is essentially the planning variable is a continuous variable. </div>

<div>Chapter 4 of the Drools documentation mentions very briefly (Section 4.3.4.1)  that planning variables can be continuous, but there does not seem to be any more details about how to achieve this.</div><div><br></div>

<div>Even if the planning variable was discrete (say bins of 5 second intervals), there is no upper bound as such.</div><div><br></div><div>How is it best to handle such planning variables in Drools Planner?</div><div><br>

</div><div>thanks,<br>josef</div><div><br></div><div><br></div>