topic Re: Trying to understand the timeline. in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Trying to understand the timeline.

RogerInHawaii — Sat, 07 Dec 2019 02:45:13 GMT

I have a Component X. I initially create it and make its sketches and bodies and sub-components. It looks good.

Sometime later in the overall I make another Component Y, so Y was created AFTER X.

I later go back and ACTIVATE Component X. The timeline shows ONLY the operations that I did on that Component, which is what I expect. With X activated I ADD a sub-component SUB-X to it. I'm EXPECTING that the Component icon for the sub-component SUB-X will get added right at the very end of X's timeline, i.e. the timeline that's currently visible in the timeline window. And it DOES! At least it looks like it does.

I then activate Component Y, which was created AFTER Component X. I do a Copy operation on SUB-X and a Paste of it into Component Y. And if FAILS. It shows a Yellow Copy/Paste icon. Hmmm, I think. What happened? X was created before Y. SUB-X was added to the end of X's timeline (wasn't it?) so it ought to be perfectly fine to get a copy of SUB-X and Paste it into Y. Yes? No?

I activate the ENTIRE project, so it shows the entire timeline for the project. I right-click on SUB-X in the browser and it appears at the very end OF THE ENTIRE TIMELINE, which means it only exists AFTER Y!! It's NOT at the end of X's timeline, which would have made it perfectly valid to Copy/Paste it into Y.

I was under the impression that when you activate a Component and do operations on it, those operations are INSERTED or ADDED to the timeline OF THE COMPONENT. But in this case my SUB-X got added at the very end of the overall timeline. SOOO CONFUSED.

I EXPECT a timeline that looks like this:

- - - X - SUB-X ------ Y ------ end of timeline

which would let me Copy/Paste SUB-X into (as a sub-component of) Y and thereby get

- - - X - SUB-X ------ Y - Copy/Pasted SUB-X----- end of timeline

But I get a timeline that looks like:

- - - X ------- Y ------ SUB-X end of timeline

which means I can't Copy/Paste SUB-X as a sub-component of Y, because it doesn't even exist from Y's standpoint.

How can I get SUB-X to actually be at the end of X's timeline, so that it exists within the timeline BEFORE Component Y, and NOT way over there on the far end of the overall timeline?

Re: Trying to understand the timeline.

jeff_strater — Sat, 07 Dec 2019 03:12:03 GMT

"I was under the impression that when you activate a Component and do operations on it, those operations are INSERTED or ADDED to the timeline OF THE COMPONENT."

No, this is incorrect. The "Hide all inactive features" setting:

Is only a filter on the timeline. It does not change the end-of-design marker (insertion point) at all.

There are many reasons for this. The main one is that there is no guarantee that the features for a component are even located together in the timeline (although this is definitely a best design practice, and one I try to do when I can). So, if you want this behavior, you will have to roll the end-of-design marker to where you want it before you activate the component.

Re: Trying to understand the timeline.

laughingcreek — Sat, 07 Dec 2019 03:14:28 GMT

When you activate a component, the timeline doesn't move. You can see this if you deactivate "hide all inactive features".

Like you, I like just seeing the features associated with the active component, so I leave this checked.

WHEN i remember, after activating a component I select the last feature, right click, and select "roll timeline marker here". In your example when you do this you will notice component Y disappears from the browser, because the marker is being rolled to before it was created.

When I forget, I'll grab any newly created features and drag them forward in the timeline so all the features for a single component will be together.

Re: Trying to understand the timeline.

RogerInHawaii — Sat, 07 Dec 2019 04:05:26 GMT

Thank you for the amazingly quick responses. 🙂

I often find that the history marker doesn't even appear. Here's a case where I did indeed select to "Scroll history marker here". But no marker shows.

And when the history marker is at some point in the timeline you can move it using the single-step controls...

Doesn't the Move To End control ALSO position the history marker at the far end of the visible timeline? Should doing THAT accomplish what I'm trying to do, i.e. get the newly created sub-component to be created WITHIN the parent component's timeline, rather than at the very end of the entire timeline?

If I use the suggestion about moving the history marker to an operation within the component's timeline BEFORE activating it, or simply (AFTER activating) select the last visible item in the timeline and doing a Move History Marker here, can I then use the single step to get to the very end of the component's timeline, will THAT get it to do what I want when I subsequently do a New Component operation, resulting in it being added AT THAT POINT IN THE TIMELINE, rather than it going at the very end of the overall timeline?

Frankly, I'm amazed that I never encountered this problem in the two years that I've been using Fusion.

Re: Trying to understand the timeline.

laughingcreek — Sat, 07 Dec 2019 04:30:08 GMT

@RogerInHawaii wrote:

...I often find that the history marker doesn't even appear. Here's a case where I did indeed select to "Scroll history marker here". But no marker shows...

I think that's a bug that's been going around. @jeff_strater might have more to say

Doesn't the Move To End control ALSO position the history marker at the far end of the visible timeline? Should doing THAT accomplish what I'm trying to do, i.e. get the newly created sub-component to be created WITHIN the parent component's timeline, rather than at the very end of the entire timeline?

No. "move to end" will move the time line to the very end of the project's time line. there's only one timeline, when you activate a component, the features not in that component just get FILTERED out so you can't see them. They are still there.

If I use the suggestion about moving the history marker to an operation within the component's timeline BEFORE activating it, or simply (AFTER activating) select the last visible item in the timeline and doing a Move History Marker here, can I then use the single step to get to the very end of the component's timeline, will THAT get it to do what I want when I subsequently do a New Component operation, resulting in it being added AT THAT POINT IN THE TIMELINE, rather than it going at the very end of the overall timeline?

After activating a component, select the last feature that is still visible, right click and select move marker here. Done.

Frankly, I'm amazed that I never encountered this problem in the two years that I've been using Fusion.

Me to.

Re: Trying to understand the timeline.

RogerInHawaii — Sat, 07 Dec 2019 05:03:42 GMT

OK, that seems to work. I activated the component, adjusted the visible timeline so that it showed the right tail end of the component's set of features, clicked on the right-most item and selected Roll History Marker Here. It sill didn't show any actual marker, but ... I then selected to add a New Component to the active component and it did it. It appeared at the very end of the visible set of items in the timeline.

I then selected to activate the ENTIRE project and again adjusted the timeline so that it showed the right tail end of the set of features. The newly added component did NOT appear at the end ! Yeah!

I then went to the browser and selected that newly added component and selected to Show In Timeline, and lo and behold it repositioned the timeline so that it showed it, nowhere near the end of the entire timeline, but just to the right of the previously last item for the parent component.

So, that does indeed seem to be the way to get things where I need them.

It just seems to me that the very word "Activate" implies not only that that's what you'll see in the timeline window but that, by default, the History Marker will be positioned to the right of the last item, so that any additions you make will indeed be (at least somewhat) contiguous in the timeline for that active component.

Sure, there are operations you can do, like Remove, that can reasonably appear anywhere in the timeline after the thing that's being removed. But in general when you're working on a Component I would expect all of the operations to be generally contiguous within the timeline, and having the History Marker automatically positioned at the end of the activate component would go a long way towards making that happen.

Anyway, thank you again for your help. Don't you guys ever sleep? It's Friday night at 7pm here in Hawaii. It must be a lot later wherever you are.

Re: Trying to understand the timeline.

TrippyLighting — Sun, 08 Dec 2019 04:18:39 GMT

@laughingcreek wrote:

@RogerInHawaii wrote:

...I often find that the history marker doesn't even appear. Here's a case where I did indeed select to "Scroll history marker here". But no marker shows...

I think that's a bug that's been going around. @jeff_strater might have more to say

That bug has been around in a number of incarnation and I am so tired of of bug that I don't even report it anymore. There are several threads around that report a missing timeline marker dating back at least 2 years.

Often it works to open/close the data panel. Sometimes it works to change to another design and back.

Or you can right-click on the timeline and choose "Roll timeline marker here". Then it appears again.

Its clearly been a very hard and elusive bug to crack!