TIMELINE

TIMELINE

TIMELINE adds a vertical bar to the T/HIS plot showing the current time displayed in the D3PLOT graphics window. Each T/HIS graph can have it's own timeline.

If a curve has been created using the T/HIS COM operation to combine two curves, e.g. Force-Displacement of a spring, the X-axis will no longer be time, so a vertical timeline makes no sense in this case. For curves that have been created this way, a point is drawn on the curve instead.

By default the first D3PLOT window will control the position of the timeline in each T/HIS graph.

The D3PLOT window used to control the timeline position can be changed using the popup menu in the T/HIS Global Command menu. This popup can also be used to turn OFF the timeline. This popup menu will set the timeline for ALL the T/HIS graphs.

After turning on the timeline in a T/HIS graph

• You can drag this bar in the T/HIS window to a new point, and the D3PLOT graphics window will jump to the new time.
• Equally if you move the D3PLOT graphics window to a new state the bar in the T/HIS plot will update.

Note that the timeline bar can only be positioned at times in the complete state (.ptf) file, since only these times are available as plotting states for D3PLOT. (Although D3PLOT can interpolate between states it would be potentially misleading to associate a "real" time-history value at some intermediate time with an interpolated graphical state.)