# I can't find "Needs cause"

**URL:** <https://forum.hollywoodcamerawork.com/t/i-cant-find-needs-cause/2000>\
**Category:** Causality Story Sequencer\
**Created:** [June 22, 2026, 12:07pm UTC](https://forum.hollywoodcamerawork.com/t/i-cant-find-needs-cause/2000 "2026-06-22T12:07:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![oliver](https://forum.hollywoodcamerawork.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/o/85f322/32.png) [@oliver](https://forum.hollywoodcamerawork.com/u/oliver)\
**Post date:** [June 22, 2026, 12:07pm UTC](https://forum.hollywoodcamerawork.com/t/i-cant-find-needs-cause/2000/1 "2026-06-22T12:07:38Z")

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Hi,

what happened to the really useful feature “Needs cause” like shown in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFTcnRaD6Rg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFTcnRaD6Rg)?

I’m using version 4.1.7 (Macos, M4) and can’t find the feature.

Oliver

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**Author:** ![perholmes](https://forum.hollywoodcamerawork.com/user_avatar/forum.hollywoodcamerawork.com/perholmes/32/3_2.png) [@perholmes](https://forum.hollywoodcamerawork.com/u/perholmes)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2026, 10:48pm UTC](https://forum.hollywoodcamerawork.com/t/i-cant-find-needs-cause/2000/2 "2026-08-03T22:48:53Z")

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Hi,

This feature was removed because it looked good on paper but it actually forced a way of working that leads you on a path to chaos. Basically it forces the idea that every story line is a lane. That means that if you have 30 story lines in your story, that’s 30 lanes. Now your story gets split up across 30 lanes, which makes it extremely hard to understand the sequence of the story.

The sad reality has been that when you get over four to five lanes, it becomes very difficult to trace the sequence of your story. You would have the same problem on a wall with sticky notes. It’s not specific to Causality but if you have reserved space like that and your eye has to jump up and down, you really can’t understand the story.

But it has given us endless grief that you’re not allowed to use a lot of lanes because for major storylines the most natural fit really is to make a lane.

So we’ve been working for a while on a different way to render the whiteboard that I think is the future, which is if you imagine auto-collapsing lanes. So that instead of lanes reserving the vertical space, they kind of grow and shrink and mingle with each other based on where the activity is. Suddenly you’re allowed to use lanes as storylines.

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**Author:** ![perholmes](https://forum.hollywoodcamerawork.com/user_avatar/forum.hollywoodcamerawork.com/perholmes/32/3_2.png) [@perholmes](https://forum.hollywoodcamerawork.com/u/perholmes)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2026, 2:02pm UTC](https://forum.hollywoodcamerawork.com/t/i-cant-find-needs-cause/2000/3 "2026-10-07T14:02:29Z")

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Hi,

It’s settled on this end that with the new whiteboard, causations become first-class citizens again, so this will definitely happen, and hopefully soon.

Per