Bee Docs Timeline 3D

Latte Other Software & Development
1

Those who’ve been thinking about buying a timeline application might want to consider Bee Docs Timeline 3D described here:

beedocs.com/index.php

I mention it because the regular price is $65, and MacUpdate is offering it along with 9 other Mac apps in a $49.95 bundle:

mupromo.com/

I’ve not used any timeline apps, so I can’t make any recommendations. Judging by the video, Timeline 3D seem to be for creating highly visual interactive video displays rather than something an author would use while writing or that would work well as black and white in a book.

Anyone who has been using the Scrivener-friendly Aeon Timeline might want to compare the two here. I suspect the two are as different as cats and dogs.

2

I’d say that’s a pretty accurate estimate. :slight_smile:

Having tinkered with the latest demo of Bee Docs Timeline 3D, I see it as mainly a presentation environment, while the aim of Aeon Timline is to become a serious tool for writers.

So, unless you have a need for flashy chronological presentations, I couldn’t see much advantage to buying into Bee Docs.

Best,

Joachim

3

Although, keep in mind that Timeline 3D timelines don’t have to be in 3D. It can display them as ordinary, more easily read 2D timelines, as well.

4

That’s true. But even in 2D, Beedocs still lacks any and all of the calculating and organising features of Aeon, current and planned.

I think that Beedocs is simply intended for a quite different user group than us Scriveners.

Best,

Joachim

5

I used Bee Docs to create a Quicktime movie of a chronology of historical events to accompany my book. It works very well but you do need a high spec machine to generate the movie. It’s an excellent tool for presenting information but is not designed for planning purposes.

6

Bee Docs Timeline is an excellent tool to present information, but it doesn’t really work when you are trying to figure out the structure of a novel. The two man reasons are:
[]The layout is automatic, therefore you have no control over the placement of the event. This is a real time saver when you are presenting, but when you are developing a novel’s timeline it might be a bit counterproductive.[/]
[]So far as I know (and I have the 2D version), you can only create one timeline on a give chart,which makes it difficult to visualize multiple story lines at the same time.[/]
Again, it is a wonderful and polished application, but not very well suited for the planning and writing stages.

7

Events can be repositioned by double clicking and entering a new date or other info in the window that opens. As far as I can tell, events cannot be slid around, though, as with Aeon.

Rows can be added by clicking the the “Add Row” element in the Edit menu drop down.

8

I really liked Bee Docs Timeline 3D, and was considering using it as my primary timeline software.

The 3D effects broke with OS X 10.6.2. They still work, sort of, but each item in your timeline makes it take exponentially longer to render. That’s not exaggeration.

The developer says it’s Apple’s fault. While initially, it may have been, I don’t know that I can still side with him about that. The product is Bee Docs Timeline 3D and several months into the 10.6.2 release the 3D rendering is still broken.

I still like it. :slight_smile:

9

Yes, you are right. But what I meant is that you cannot move events upward or around when there are too many events. BD Timeline simply expands the workspace.

Yes, I stand corrected.

These two features, although great for presentations, still make Bee Docs Timeline less than ideal for planning a novel. I would like to see a timeline application that would allow you:

  • Without breaking the link with the the event’s date, to show and move around some metadata for that event.
  • The ability to compress time, so that where there are expanses of time without events (relative to the novel’s timeline), these are omitted. Something similar to metro maps, which organize all the stations ignoring the actual distances but keeping the relationships among them.
10

BeeDocs Timeline was one of the first software I bought for my new Mac (after Scrivener, of course), mainly because I’m working on a historical novel and I really need something to “see” all my factual information in time (I also acquired DevonThink Pro to be able to manage all the research, and Sente to manage the bibliography behind it). I need to compare different series of events, for exemple, my own fiction events, global events, certain institutions events, and so on.

So, first thing I did on BeeDocs Timeline was to create multiple rows (I have 5) and create a huge 500 years timeline. It was too much for the software and the purpose of visualizing events gets lost in the way, because I’m creating a detailed timeline, full of events. So I reduced it to 100 years periods, but it’s still too big to be maneageble. I will eventually reduce it to shorter periods. If I have many events on the same row, the automatic layout gets kind of crazy; so, instead of increase the height of the row it tries to compress everything and some information is hidden.

There are some features of BeeDocs Timeline that I adore, besides it’s looks, of course: the versatility to control date format for each event instead of the complete timeline, the superfast easy way to create new events, the possibility to add pictures.

I still believe that it needs more versatile navigation, zooming capabilities, the possibility to set a different color to each row, and a more editable layout, as well as the option for vertical timelines.

On the other hand, as others have said, for a planning tool for writers, it lacks many useful features that I’ve seen on Aeon Timeline (although I haven’t figured out how to used them just yet).

A friend of mine who is working on science fiction also needs timeline software that allows him to create timelines with an entirely new calendar, not just setting into “none” or something like that, but the ability to work with different solar years (not 365 days), with entirely different eras (not a. C. or Gregorian calendar), and so on. So far, I haven’t found any software capable of doing that.

I still love BeeDocs Timeline, and I think it has potential, but I also recognize it’s not exactly the ideal software for writing, at least, not yet; although it’s great for creating short timelines for illustration purposes. I’m a writer who needs her charts to look good, because it’s influences my way of understanding them, and my creative mental process.