Contents of the Placements Dialog Box

Use the fields and options to configure the Placements dialog box.

Method

Field

Description

Automatic

Open Plan places all activity boxes (including those you have previously placed manually) in automatically calculated positions on the network view. In performing these calculations, Open Plan uses the options you specify on this dialog box. Activities that do not have relationships with other activities at the same hierarchical level are placed below any activities with relationships. Automatic placements are not automatically saved and do not overwrite your manual placements. The Automatic setting frequently results in a network diagram that is easier to decipher. Note: For automatic placements, Open Plan stores your settings for how the placements are calculated. It does not, however, store the actual placements themselves. Placements are recalculated each time the view is opened. If you perform automatic placements and then make adjustments to the activity positions manually, you can preserve your modifications by saving them as manual placements. When Automatic is selected, you can specify the following options for calculating automatic placements: Manual: This option turns off automatic placements and returns the view to the last manual placements. Save As Manual: Open Plan saves the placements calculated by the automatic feature by replacing your manual placements with those calculated automatically. This option is available only when automatic placements are in effect and filtering is not enabled.

Automatic Options

Field	Description
Avoid Page Breaks	If you have enabled automatic placements, this option controls how Open Plan positions activities that fall across page breaks of printed output. By selecting this setting, you can have Open Plan shift activities that would otherwise fall across page breaks.
Show All Levels	If you have enabled automatic placements, this option displays all the activities from a project in the same view, regardless of their hierarchical level. When you calculate placements with this option turned on, Open Plan may not position all activities from the same subproject together.
Time Scale Project	If you have enabled automatic placements, this option groups activities based on a user-specified date field specified in the Scaling Specification dialog box.
Zone Project	Use this field to specify whether Open Plan should consider zoning criteria when calculating automatic placements. If this option is selected, zone headings are displayed as temporary annotation objects. You can move these zone heading annotations in the same way you can move any other annotation.
Display Interface Activities	If you have enabled automatic placements, this option allows Open Plan to show either the predecessor activities, successor activities, or both, even though these activities might be excluded by the current filter. Attention: For more information about filters, see Filters.

Buttons

The table below provides information about the buttons in this dialog box.

Button	Description
Filters	This button displays the Filters dialog box, which you can use to select a filter to apply to the view, create new filters, edit existing filters, or delete filters.
Zoning	Click this button to display the Zone Attributes dialog box that you can use to define how Open Plan displays zones when you select the Zone Project option.
Time Scale	This button displays the Scaling Specification dialog box, which you can use to specify how the network view should be scaled as well as the date formats to be used on the network view. Attention: For more information, see Defining Time Scaling.