ArcGIS Pro: Provide "Cumulative Data" Option for Time Animation

[DT]

"Cumulative Data" needs to be available as an option under the Time "Context".  It is not.  It is available under the Time Tab in ArcMap.  I thought maybe animations could be created quicker utilizing the 64 bit environment.  I was wrong - it is quicker to generate animations in ArcMap due to a cleaner workflow and interface.  It is also a better animation, since Pro is missing functionality such as "Cumulative Data".

[KoryKramer]

D T‌

To achieve what you need in ArcGIS Pro, lock the start time on the Time ribbon (though you may not necessarily need to do this if the span is not locked).

Configure time slider settings—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS Desktop 

Because the start is locked data will display cumulatively during playback. Try working with the Start and Span locks to get your data to display cumulatively.

[DT]

Thanks. I read and experimented with all that prior and had no indication that's what it did. In fact, after experimenting with those settings, it's still not clear what exactly they do.  Are you positive that's the intended function?  If so, there at minimum needs to be some more descriptive language in the help documentation.

[NathanShephard]

Hi D T,

Thanks for asking about this topic. Yes, that "lock" toggle button is the way that you show cumulative time in Pro. There's some documentation about those controls in the help (see the below link), but I agree it's minimal and we should provide more guidance. We'll take a look at it again - for example we don't have the word "cumulative" on the page, which is definitely something we should change.

Link: Configure time slider settings—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS Desktop 

In regards to creating a time-aware animation video, did you find this page? Is this your end goal? Is the info helpful?

Link: Animate through time—Animation | ArcGIS Desktop  

Note that we're now making YouTube videos to help explain some of our more advanced concepts in a graphical way (rather than lots of words on pages). We don't have one posted for Time yet, but we do (for example) have a group of them that run through the best practices for animations that you might find interesting. 

Link: Animation Lessons—Your First Animation - YouTube  

So, back to the "display of cumulative time" - one big difference between 10.x and Pro is that this option is exposed at the individual layer level in ArcMap, while it is exposed at the map level in Pro. This was done on purpose because we wanted the time slider to act as a true filter of what content gets displayed in the view. The map can only have one temporal extent at a time (just like can only have one spatial extent), so we use the map's time to drive all the layers.

The impact of this design for maps with a single time-aware layer in the view is negligible. The workflow is different, but the capabilities are the same. However, if you used ArcMap with multiple time-aware layers, and only SOME of them are set to 'cumulative time', then unfortunately this kind of display is not currently possible in Pro. We want to meet this need via the use of temporal symbology, which will be supported on a per-layer basis -> eg: "fade out point symbols from LayerA based on time". The design work for this is ongoing but you should know that it is not slated for the next release of Pro (ie: 2.1).

If time is an important part of your GIS work, we'd really appreciate getting more feedback on your needs and use-cases so we can be sure to allow for it in our design.

Thanks!  

-Nathan.

ArcGIS Pro Team