Hammocks are a type of activity used to represent or summarize a group of selected activities, milestones, and benchmarks. A hammock is represented on the canvas by a diagonally hashed bar, beginning at the earliest start date and ending at the latest finish date of its member objects.
A hammock will reflect any date and duration change based on corresponding changes to any of its member objects.
A hammock is different from a regular activity in that it has no attributes of its own (like dates or info objects), except for the description/ID. Hammocks measure and model the attributes of their member activities. Hammocks do not accept resources. Furthermore, they cannot to be linked to other objects. A hammock will display critical if any member objects are critical, and member objects cannot belong to any additional hammocks.
To create a hammock, select the desired member objects on the canvas to be included. Next, press the Hammock icon on the toolbar.
The Enter Grid Number window opens, prompting for a vertical gridline to place the hammock on.
If the desired gridline for the hammock to be placed at is unoccupied, the member objects will stay in their current location, and the hammock will be placed accordingly.
If the desired gridline for the hammock to be placed at is already occupied, all activities at the desired gridline and below will be bumped down by one gridline in order to accommodate placement of the hammock.
If objects reside on every gridline below, including the last gridline, the objects on the second to last gridline will be placed on the last gridline as well, superimposed behind the set of objects that were already there.
To check for this condition, click from the menu bar to search for any objects that are superimposed. For more info, see Object Filters.
Once a grid number is chosen, the Hammock Object window automatically opens. The rest is similar to adding a regular activity.
Note: If a hammock includes only delay/gain objects with total duration of zero, the hammock still displays the duration as one, as hammocks cannot have zero duration.
Hammock Right-Click Menu
Hammocks have a few unique options available via the right-click context menu:
Click to hide member objects. If hidden, click again to show.
Click to fade every other object on the canvas except for the member objects. Click again to restore.
Click to fade only the member objects. Click again to restore.
Click to hide the resource profile for every other activity.
Click to hide the resource profile for only member objects.