🌐Grid and Snap

Display measurement and unit snapping

The grid provides a measure of time, displayed as spaced vertical lines and labels along the timeline ruler denoting significant increments of time.

Grid Toggle

This toggles the grid display on and off. The grid is based on the time units selected.

Use the keyboard shortcut R to toggle the grid on and off.

Grid snapping can still be used even if the grid is not currently displayed.

Grid Time Format

Use the drop-down menu to select the time format. Whichever format is selected affects how the grid is displayed and what increments of time are used. This also affects snapping, which always snaps to increments on the grid. See Display Formats for more information on time formats.

Grid Divisions

The other drop-down menu, to the left of the grid time format, sets the number of divisions to show in the grid. The lower the number, the more divisions shown, while higher numbers show a more sparse grid with larger time increments.

The Time Signature (if other than 4/4) also affects the display of the grid so that it naturally shows the expected beats per bar.

Shortcuts to increase/decrease grid resolution

Use the number 1 key to decrease the grid divisions, and the number 2 key to increase divisions. The Timeflow view must have keyboard focus.

Minor Grid lines

The preference setting 'Draw Minor Grid Lines' may be enabled to further subdivide the grid into smaller increments, indicated by lighter vertical between the major snap lines.

The view with minor grid lines off. Vertical division lines are only drawn for the selected grid increment.

Minor grid lines enabled. Notice the lighter color lines subdividing the primary time.

This feature also takes into consideration musical timing and can aid in visualizing the time signature.

When minor grid lines are displayed, they are also snappable.

Snap Time

Snapping to the time grid is helpful for precise synchronization and works with everything that can be moved in time including keyframes, tracks, events, markers, and when dragging the playhead.

Snap On-Demand

Snapping can be used when moving anything in time by holding the Alt key while dragging. This snaps to the current time grid or the playhead. This modifier can be added before or after dragging has begun. This also snaps keyframe values when working in the Graph View.

Note that if Snap Time is already enabled, holding the Alt key temporarily disables snapping instead.

Use the keyboard shortcut H to toggle time snapping on and off.

Step by Grid Increments

Use the keyboard shortcuts Control + PageUp and Control + PageDown to move the playhead forward or backward to the next nearest grid increment.

Snap and Time Offset Snapping works in the local time space of the object. If the object or channel time offset is set to a non-integral value (i.e. between grid increments) then its keyframes may appear off alignment from the grid when snapped. This is normal behavior, but if not desired, adjust the time offset of the object to match the grid increments.

Snap Value

This feature is only applied in the Graph View. Use this to snap keyframe values to the grid displayed. The value grid is generated automatically based on the view scale and is not affected by the grid divisions or time format. Finer adjustments can be made by zooming in further.

Use the keyboard shortcut J to toggle value snapping on and off.

Snap Value On-Demand

Snapping on-demand holding the Alt key also applies value snapping when in the Graph View.

Snap Constraint To snap the time of a keyframe on-demand without affecting its value, add the Shift key to constrain movement. This forces a choice between either snapping the value vertically, or snapping time horizontally, based on the direction dragged.