Occurrences (FAQs)

Occurrences are the foundation of a Topicscape. An occurrence must appear in a topic and is an item of information that you want to keep about that topic.

An occurrence may be a file, such as a web URL, text file, word processing document of audio file. An occurrence may also be 'fileless', in which case it will just be made up of the information that you key into the Details Panel for that occurrence.

Some of my topics now have way too many occurrences

I've noticed that some of my topics now have so many occurrences that I can't find my way around them any more. Have I outgrown 3D Topicscape?

No, this is a natural part of the process of collecting information about a topic. You have a few web pages and a document, you dig deeper and soon the references in that topic build up and the number of items could easily be divided into sub-topics.

There is a feature of 3D Topicscape designed to help you with exactly that need.

Decide on how you will break the topic down into a finer level of classification. You can do this in several ways: by more subtle divisions of category or by organizing occurrences according to their status (drafts / current / historical / discarded), for example. There are as many other approaches as people with ideas.

This is a good way to make a sub-topic:

Hold down the Ctrl key and click on all the occurrences that fit into the first sub-category you have decided on.

Release the Ctrl key, right-click one of the selected occurrences and on the pop-up menu that appears, select 'Create sub-topic with selected occurrences'.

Then you will see the Create sub-topic panel. This takes the name of the first occurrence you clicked on as a suggested name, but you can change that. You can use the usual Hint facility for new topics here as well.

Then move on to the next sub-topic that you've decided on if there are more.

If you come across an occurrence that you realize you should have put in one of the new sub-topics after you have made it, it's really easy to drag from the occurrence list in one topic to one of its children (or parents) visible in the Navigation Map.

Once you've finished, you can go back to the 'Scape and the sub-topics just made appear as normal.

Can I have a Topicscape as an occurrence in a Topicscape?

Yes. A few functions have been limited to avoid unexpected damage to a Topicscape, though. For example, you cannot move or copy a Topicscape to bring it under the control of another Topicscape as there may be many files associated with it in addition to its database (the 3DT file). It will stay in its original location and have a 'point to' occurrence.

And if you delete an occurrence that happens to be a Topicscape, it will not actually delete the 3DT file or its associated files, just the pointer occurrence itself.

For details, search for "Special occurrence cases" in your Topicscape Help.

Can I have an occurence that links to a specific topic in another Topicscape?

"I want to have an occurrence that it opens another Topicscape and makes a specific topic in that the central topic in my view (i.e. the Current Topic)."

Yes, you can do that as well.

For details, search for "Special occurrence cases" in your Topicscape Help.