Date component in date constraint

Q & A
#1

I am mapping out my novel and I want to construct a timeline of the major events. Here is my challenge:

My novel starts on a known date (1 month before my protagonist’s birthday) and ends 30 days later (on her birthday). I want to map out the events so the end date is exactly correct (30 days). I have all my chapters, scenes, and passages entered. Now I want to link them all together.

There is the situation I want to handle:

  • EventA has an exact start date (24 May 2309).
  • EventY is linked back to EventA (block/blocked by) and should start at 9am the next day and have a duration of 2 hours. I do not want to fix a date as other events may be inserted between them.
  • EventZ is linked back to the previous event and has a duration of 3 hours and needs to start at 6pm that same day.
  • Question: How do I configure the date, time, and constraints to get EventZ to start at 6pm regardless of the end time of the previous event. I want the date to be flexible but the time fixed. I tried setting the start to “6pm” but it ignores my input and uses the previous event’s end date. I tried using “Date constraint” with a value of “Start" “matches hour” of "18” but I get a “!” .
  • I could forget about linking the events and set fixed dates for every thing but then it’ll be a real headache to change things if I decide to change one event.
#2

Maybe you need to say 6pm? What you tried seems the correct way to me …

#3

When you use the 24h time setting, the time is shown as 00:00:00 so 18 should be correct.

#4

Yes, but maybe the setting is different than expected, that may be an explanation why it’s not working.

#5

Maybe…
I actually got some trouble yesterday when I added two constraints to a relation, but I didn’t took much notice of it, because I was testing something else, but it was one “start after start in “item””, and i think another with "end after end of “item2"”, but I only used dates and the 3rd item ended up behave strange and constraint didn’t resolve, but I dropped it, because it wasn’t my main testing objective at the time… so I just thought I did some wrong input… deleted the constraints and moved on…

#6

When you say that you have added a Date constraint with the value of Start matches hour of 18 and you get a “!” do you mean that you get this:

constraintsScreenshot

This symbol is flagging that currently your event does not match the constraint (ie. it does not start at 6pm). Is that true?
Currently date part constraints are not auto-resolved, so you would have to manually alter the time of the event itself, but the constraints system will flag with this symbol if the event’s time gets adjusted to be incorrect.

#7

Thank you Jess for the response.

I can work with this limitation as events with the wrong hour are reported as errors in the constraints panel. My concern was that every time I adjusted one event, all future events would have to be reviewed individually.

I look forward to automatic resolution/adjustment.
Paul
P.S. Awesome App.