Separating simultaneous items

Analyst's Notebook can chart items with a date and time as controlling items. The horizontal position of controlling items on the chart is in relation to the flow of time from left to right.

If two or more items have the same date and time, they can display on top of each other. When you want to inspect these events visually, for instance looking for groups of such items close together, it is useful to separate them by a small time increment so that they are not displayed on top of each other.

If you turn on Use Milliseconds to Separate Simultaneous Items, the interface automatically adds a millisecond to the time of each chart item with an identical date and time. If there are several chart items with the same time the first item is unchanged, the second is one millisecond later, the third two milliseconds later. This ensures that all items are visible on the chart.

If you do not turn onUse Milliseconds to Separate Simultaneous Items, the items appear at the same horizontal location on the chart. This is indicated on the time bar by the marker symbol, which uses the overlap color to indicate that there is more than one item at this specific time location in the chart.

To view the time of events separated by milliseconds, your time format must be set to display seconds (for example, HH:mm: ss). However, the time bar shows the full time of events regardless of the time format setting.

Important: Adding milliseconds to the time might mean that certain analysis functions do not give the expected result. For example, if a millisecond is added to an event time of 4:00 PM then a search for events between 3:00 PM and 4:00 PM will not find the event.