Timeline Rail

A horizontal track of evenly spaced, labelled points for roadmaps and process steps.

A timeline rail is a horizontal line with evenly spaced points above it, each joined to the line by a short tick and labelled. It is the natural shape for a roadmap, a release schedule, a process, or any sequence of milestones. It keeps the points evenly spaced for you, so the rail always looks deliberate.

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A timeline rail with four evenly spaced milestones, each labelled above its point.

Adding one

Open the Build category on the palette strip.

Pick Timeline, then tap the canvas to drop it, or drag to draw it at a size. It lands with three points.

To label a point, select the rail, then click the label above the point and type. Enter or clicking away keeps it, as one undoable step.

Adjusting the points

There are two ways to change how many points the rail has:

  • Add one from any of the rail's + buttons, the same ones other elements use to start an arrow: on a rail the menu also offers Add Point, which adds a point at the right-hand end (up to 12).
  • Set the count precisely: right-click the rail, open Tools, then Timeline, and use the Points stepper. It goes from 2 to 12 points, and it is the only way to remove one.

The points always stay evenly spaced, and the rail resizes to a fixed step per point whenever you change the count (wider as you add, narrower as you remove), so it stays neat as it grows. Like every data element it is an ordinary canvas element, so it moves, resizes, rotates, locks, and recolours with the active theme; its stroke (accent) colour tints the points.

Pair a timeline rail with sticky notes above each point to annotate what happens at each milestone.

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