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## Multiple time sliders

When your open databases all have only a single time state, the Time slider in the Main Window is disabled. When you have one database that has multiple time states, the Time slider is enabled and can be used exclusively to change time states for the database that has multiple time states; the database does not even have to be the active database. Things get a little more complicated when you have opened more than one time-varying database - especially if you have plots from more than one of them.

When you open a database in VisIt, it becomes the active database. If the database that you open has multiple time states, VisIt creates a new logical time slider for it so you can end up having a separate time slider for every open database with multiple time states. When VisIt has to create a time slider for a newly opened database, it also makes the new database's (also the active database) be the active time slider. There is only one Time slider control in the Main Window so when there are multiple logical time sliders, VisIt displays an Active time slider combo box (see figure) that lets you choose which logical time slider to affect when you change time using the Time slider.

Figure 3

Since VisIt allows each time-varying database to have its own logical time slider, you can create plots from more than one time-varying database in a single visualization window and change time independently for each database, an impossible operation in MeshTV and early versions of VisIt. Another benefit of having multiple logical time sliders is that the databases plotted in the visualization windows are free to have different numbers of time states. Suppose you have opened time-varying databases A and B and created plots from both databases in the same visualization window. Assuming you opened database A and then database B, database B will be the active database. If you want to change time states for database A but not for database B, you can select database A from the Active time slider combo box and then change the time state using the Time slider. If you then wanted to change time states for database B, you could select it in the Active time slider combo box and then change the time state using the Time slider. If you wanted to change time states for both A and B at the same time, you have to use database correlations, which are covered next.

Figure 4

Figure 5