Manage Evolutions and Evolution Trees

Open Design Evolution Manager App from Project

The files you want to organize and analyze with evolutions must be contained in a single project. For more information about creating a project, see Create a New Project from a Folder.

To open the Design Evolution Manager app, first open the project containing your files. To open the app, from the Projects tab, under Tools, click the Design Evolution Manager app icon .

Create Evolution Tree

When you open the Design Evolution Manager app for the first time in a project, or when you click the New Tree button in the Design Evolution Manager toolstrip, the Create New Evolution Tree dialog box guides you through the process of creating a new evolution tree. The currently open project is selected by default. You can name the evolution tree and optionally add notes about the evolution tree. These metadata fields can be edited at any time after creation of the evolution tree.

The app creates a new evolution tree, which is saved as part of the project. The new evolution tree contains a Baseline evolution. The Baseline evolution is a snapshot of all files in the project in their current state. By default, the Baseline evolution is locked , meaning that you cannot update this evolution with changes made to files in the project. This setting preserves the state of the Baseline evolution at the time it was created.

Navigate Evolution Trees and Make Tree Active

You can have multiple evolution trees in a project hierarchy. Use the New Tree button to create additional evolution trees in the project. Use the Tree Browser pane to navigate and view evolution trees saved in the project hierarchy. The active evolution tree contains the active evolution . The active evolution records changes made to your project files when you click the Update Tree button. To make an evolution tree active, select the tree in the Tree Browser pane and click the Make Tree Active button. The evolution tree must be active in order to update the tree.

When an inactive evolution tree is selected in the Tree Browser, you can view the evolution tree and the associated metadata, compare evolutions, and generate a report that summarizes the evolution tree.

Update Tree and Lock Evolution

The active evolution records changes made to project files when you click the Update Tree button. When you have finished making changes in an evolution, lock the evolution to prevent the evolution from capturing further changes you make to project files. When you lock the active evolution, the next time you update the tree, the Design Evolution Manager app automatically creates a new child evolution to record your changes.

Get Evolution

At any point in the design process, you can return to a previous version of your design that was saved in an evolution. In the evolution tree, select the evolution to which you want to return, then click Get Evolution. The Design Evolution Manager gets that version of the design files into the project. You can then continue working with this previous version of the design files. If the evolution you get is unlocked, it becomes the active evolution. If the evolution you get is locked, when you update the evolution tree, the app will create a child evolution which becomes the active evolution.

When you get an evolution, the app restores the previous saved state of the project files including any added or removed files. For example, assume you have an evolution tree where Evolution 1 contains the file foo.m, but in your active evolution you delete this file from disk and remove it from the project. If you get Evolution 1, the app restores the file foo.m to the disk and re-adds the file to the project.

Delete Evolutions

To delete an evolution, first select the evolution in the evolution tree, then click Delete Evolution. If the deleted evolution had a child node, the child is reparented to the next-higher evolution in the tree. You cannot delete a parent evolution that has multiple child evolutions.

To delete a branch of the evolution tree, select the parent evolution and click Delete Branch. The app deletes the selected parent evolution and all child evolutions.

Generate Report

When you have completed your design exploration, you can click the Generate Report button to generate a pdf report summarizing the evolution tree that is currently in view in the app. You can generate reports for active and non-active evolution trees. The report contains details on the structure of the evolution tree and individual evolutions and connectors, along with notes you captured for any of these elements. For each evolution, the report also summarizes changes from the parent evolution.