Hi Mark,
I’m not certain what is going wrong on your side. I downloaded the latest Content Package for R18, (hence my late reply) and checked both R17 and R18.
I created each time a little three spline based “design” and it worked flawless.
The Variation Slider was in both cases available.
Since this is not a Cineversity Tool nor based on a tutorial of CV, my main idea for the next step is:
https://www.maxon.net/en-us/support/how-can-we-help/
Please check with the support, why the “Fold My Design” doesn’t have all the options in R18, I hope that leads to a fix on your side.
So you can hopefully work with it as you would like to.
I’m not aware what information source you are using. Jus the text in the “Annotation Tags” or this:
https://help.maxon.net/#54304
The Spline interface is like a graph, left lower corner equals zero time and “Progress” as in Animation, and the Upper right corner stand for the final state in time and animation. You know that of course, but I like to make certain that this is the base for any follow up question.
My best wishes