MetaEngineering
Precondition Grapher
While the timeline provides an overview by year, it doesn't show relationships
between individual innovations. The precondition graph dynamically presents a
graph of other events that led to (or resulted from) the currently selected event.
This graph can be quite large and will seldom fit in the small thumbnail view.
Like the timeline, the precondition grapher can be viewed in a full-size window by
selecting its icon (
)
from the toolbar. Also, the depth of the graph can be cut off by choosing a cutoff bound
from the view menu.
The radio buttons below the thumbnail view permit viewing either preconditions (the events that preceded or led to the root event) or the postconditions (the graph of events that followed.)
As in the timeline, the graph nodes color-coded by concept type. The type key is visible as a watermark in the full window view. In addition, the links themselves are coded to indicate the type of precondition, as follows:
- Knowledge - blue
- Material - pink (dashed)
- Technique - black
- Resource - green
- Need - red