  Observations have shown that some filaments appear and disappear in the
H$\alpha$ line wing images periodically. There have been no attempts to model
these "winking filaments" thus far. The evaporation--condensation mechanism is
widely used to explain the formation of solar filaments. Here, we demonstrate,
for the first time, how multi-dimensional evaporation--condensation in an
arcade setup invariably causes a stretching of the magnetic topology. We aim to
check whether this magnetic stretching during cyclic evaporation--condensation
could reproduce a winking filament. We used our open-source code MPI-AMRVAC to
carry out 2D magnetohydrodynamic simulations based on a quadrupolar
configuration. A periodic localized heating, which modulates the
evaporation--condensation process, was imposed before, during, and after the
formation of the filament. Synthetic H$\alpha$ and 304 \r{A}, images were
produced to compare the results with observations. For the first time, we
noticed the winking filament phenomenon in a simulation of the formation of
on-disk solar filaments, which was in good agreement with observations.
Typically, the period of the winking is different from the period of the
impulsive heating. A forced oscillator model explains this difference and fits
the results well. A parameter survey is also done to look into details of the
magnetic stretching phenomenon. We found that the stronger the heating or the
higher the layer where the heating occurs, the more significant the winking
effect appears.
