Calculations & Workflow

Revisions: Parent & Source Tracking

How revisions and imported calcs are tracked via parent and source relationships.

ClearSpan tracks two kinds of relationship between calculations: a parent link that chains revisions of the same calc together, and a source link that records where a calc's loads were copied from. They answer two different questions — "what's the version history of this calc?" and "where did this calc's loads come from?"

Parent: revision history#

When you create a revision, ClearSpan makes a new calc that points back to the original chain via its parent. Each chain has:

  • A root calc — the original (revision number 0).
  • One or more child revisions, each with an incrementing revision number, all pointing at the same root.

The full chain — root plus every child — is what the revision switcher shows, ordered by revision number. Anyone who can read the calc can see its revision history.

Revisions arise in a few ways:

  • Engineer (staff) revisions — A snapshot of the current edits as a new latest revision. Older revisions become read-only; only the latest can be edited.
  • Revise after rejection — A client creates a revision of a rejected (or reviewed/submitted) calc to address feedback. See Rejection: Handle Feedback & Revise.
  • Reviewed with Changes — A reviewer refines a submitted calc into a new revision; the original is marked superseded rather than rejected, so no red rejection badge shows to the client.
Note

Revisions are plain snapshots. Events (created, submitted, revision, rejected, superseded, comments) are recorded against the root of the chain, so a calc's event timeline covers all its revisions in one place.

Source: where loads came from#

The source link records a copy/import relationship rather than a version. The most common cases:

  • A wood beam capacity check imports its load patterns, combos, and cases from another beam analysis — the source calc is stamped so the page can show "imported from #N" and deep-link back to it. See Link Loads to a Calc.
  • A wood post linked to a supporting beam carries that beam as its source, so its axial demands stay tied to the beam's reactions. See Wood Post Calcs.

A source link is a live tie: re-running re-derives the dependent values from the source's current state (and flags them stale if the source's load category vanished), rather than freezing a one-time copy. Member properties are never copied from the source — only loads.

Why both exist#

Parent tracking keeps an auditable version history of one calc. Source tracking keeps loads consistent across related members (beam → post, analysis → capacity check) without you re-typing numbers. A revision carries its original's source link forward, so a revised post stays grouped with its beam.