Hi Chester,
I'll explain as best I can with a short example, there are more number filters than this in each group and more groups. The numbers have been selected purely for the example.
Group 1
Number set 001 01,02,03,04,05 include no more than 2 and at least 1
Number set 002 05,06,07,08,09 include no more than 2 and at least 1
Number set 003 10,11,12,13,14 include no more than 2 and at least 1
etc
Group 2
Number set 011 05,16,21,33,35,36 41,44 include no more than 4 and at least 2
Number set 012 03,10,17,18,39,40,42,45 include no more than 4 and at least 2
Number set 013 04,06,19,20,23,27,34,43 include no more than 4 and at least 2
etc
Now from experience, most weeks one of the number sets will fail from each group but I do not know which number set.
I do not want to set 2 failures from all the number sets (in both groups), which seems to be the functionality available at the moment. This would allow 2 failures from one of the groups (and no failures from the other group).
What I want to be able to do is group the number sets to allow one failure from group 1 and one failure from group 2. Now this can be achieved by having multiple filter sets and loading them separately but as I change filters to gradually reduce the number of lines generated to a manageable amount, I have to load the separate filter sets each time (time consuming and tedious but it works).
With the grouping functionality, I could just load 1 filter set with each group of numbers defined and specify how many failures I allow from each group (much quicker and easier).
To further clarify think of it this way(this is a simplified method of what I do, by the way).
1. Create group 1 number filter set, set number of failures in Options, save and build the lines.
2. Create group 2 number filter set, set number of failures in Options, save and build the lines filtering the lines from the list above in 1.
3. Create group 3 number filter set, set number of failures in Options, save and build the lines filtering the lines from the list above in 2.
We now have 3 filter sets. If the number of lines is still to big for me to use the reduction methods in Lotwin, I know go back and start again from 1, loading each filter set, amending the filters to build fewer lines. I repeat this process until I have a manageable amount of lines to reduce using Lotwin reduction. That becomes my entry for the week.
With number grouping we would only have to build one number set because we can allow a number of failures at the group level, so the process becomes.
1. Create number filter set, set number of failures for each group and build the lines. If too many lines, then change the filters and build again and repeat until we have a manageable amount of lines to reduce using Lotwin reduction.
I hope this explains it Chester. Please let me know if have any more questions.
BigAl
