The Versions Window for the COMSOL Desktop Model
The Versions window in the Model Builder workspace shows the history of the model opened in the COMSOL Desktop when that model is opened from a database or was last saved to a database. You can use the Versions window to, for example, quickly get an overview of recently saved versions, compare what was changed between two versions, open older versions, or even restore an older version as the latest version.
From the Windows menu () in the Layout section of Model Builder’s Home toolbar, select Versions () to open the Versions window.
The window contains a table with versions of the model sorted in chronological order, most recent first. At most 100 versions are initially shown. Click the Show More button () to include older versions in the table. The version that is opened in the COMSOL Desktop is highlighted in bold.
The table columns are:
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The type column — the type of the model represented by an icon. See Item Types and Save Types.
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The Title column — the title set for the model in that version.
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The Saved column — the time when the version was saved.
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The Saved By column — the name of the user that saved the version.
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The Branch column — the target branch the version was saved on. There is only a single branch, default named Main, when creating a new database.
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The Comments column — the optional comment provided when the version was saved.
The Versions Window Toolbar
The toolbar above the table contains the following toolbar buttons:
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Click the Refresh button () to refresh the table in case a new version has been saved. The table will automatically refresh if you save a new version to the database from the COMSOL Desktop, but the same is not true if one of your coworkers saves.
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Click the Show More button () to show more versions in the table.
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Click the Version Details button () to open The Version Details Dialog Box containing more information on a specific version.
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Click the Open button () to open a selected version in the COMSOL Desktop.
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Click the Run button () to launch and run a selected version in the COMSOL Desktop. Only enabled if the selected version is an application.
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Click the Compare button () to compare a selected version with the model opened in the COMSOL Desktop. Select two versions to compare them with each other. See Comparing Models Saved in Databases.
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Click the Restore Version button () to save the selected version as a new latest version of the model. See also Restore Version.
If you right-click a model version, you can also:
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Select Copy Location () to copy a text string with a URI that uniquely identifies the model version in the database to the clipboard.
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Select Permanently Delete Version () to permanently delete the model version in the database. This cannot be undone. See also Permanently Deleting a Version.
Splitting a Model History in Two
When you create a new model from an existing model, for example by saving a new draft or selecting Save as New () in the Save window, the Model Manager database stores a reference to the origin model from the new model (or rather, the version of the original model). You can think of the new model as being split off from the original model, such that the new model receives its own identity and version history.
The Versions window helps you keep track of a model’s potential origin by including the versions of the latter up to the source version that the new model was created from in the window’s table — see Figure 2-1 for a schematic representation.
You are likely to first encounter this split-off in the Versions window when saving a new draft from a regular model — see Saving Drafts of Models. The top table rows correspond to the versions of the saved draft. The remaining table rows are the versions of the regular model that the draft originated from.
Figure 2-1: A schematic of the version history of three models, with the chronological order of versions read from left to right. The first version of the middle model was created from the third version of the top model, and the first version of the bottom model was created from the second version of the middle model. The version history of the top model includes three versions, that of the middle model includes six versions, and that of the bottom model includes seven versions. The history of the bottom model does not include the third version of the middle model as that was saved after the bottom model was split off.