Rules for Grouping Timeline Features?

[Anonymous]

I have been making an effort to keep my workflow more organized and have just recently run into an issue where i had to ungroup certain features ( deleted 1 of the 2 features grouped) and then added more features that i want to be regrouped with the 1 left over right after it in the timeline so they can be quickly suppressed when necessary. When i go to regroup the new set of features however the option is no longer available. So my end results are a design where everything is neatly organized except for a set of features in the middle of my timeline. Not the end of the world of course but still somewhat aggravating so my question is are there rules for when features can and cannot be grouped?

[TrippyLighting]

That's hard to answer without seeing your desind, or at least the timeline of it.

[jeff_strater]

Hi @Anonymous,

There could certainly be a bug there.  In general, as long as features are all side by side in the timeline, you should be able to group them.  The one situation that can sometimes trip you up is if you have a component active, and you have "Hide Inactive Features" turned on (which it is by default).  

This option will hide features that are not owned by the active component.  So, there could be hidden features that are not selected that are in-between the features you have selected.  This is why I've turned this option off in my version.

Jeff

[Anonymous]

Hi @jeff_strater@TrippyLighting Thank you for responding. Here is the best example i can find of the situation. The second design is a revised iteration of the first and as you can see there are certain features ungrouped in the second that I was unable to regroup. Again not the end of my world just a curious circumstance id like understand more to avoid if possible.

http://a360.co/2qwbelR

http://a360.co/2qxI1TQ

[jeff_strater]

Thanks so much, @Anonymous, for sharing the models.

First, I have to compliment you on your timeline grouping.  This is a great way to help keep your models organized.  @TrippyLighting will approve, as well!

This model does show the problem.  I will create a bug to track it.  The root of the problem, I think, is right here:

You can see here that it looks like there is some kind of vestigial group here, and I suspect that is what is causing the bug.  You cannot nest timeline groups in Fusion, and if Fusion thinks that that joint is already in a group, it will block the "Create Group" command.  I did verify that if you just select the 3 previous features, you can create a group:

So, we will investigate this.  If you have any idea of what steps got you to this point, it would be helpful.  I have hit this myself once or twice, so I know it's real, I just have not come up with a recipe for reproducing it, which would be helpful in fixing it.

Jeff

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

I poked around a bit and found at least one workflow that shows the problem.  I'm not sure if this is the same thing you did, but I found that if I deleted all but the first feature in a group, it created a similar situation:

So, I do have enough for us to investigate.

Jeff

[Anonymous]

Thank you. Now that I understand how I got to that point I was able to clean it up.