JBenghiat

@jloganthomas I missed that you were using styles. The styles layer dialog seems to be missing the revert stacking order option. If you convert to unsoiled and go to the Layers dialog via Obj Info, you will see the option there. I think your only options are to manually re-order layers or change a viewport to unsettled and make a new style from there. You can't directly overwrite the existing style, so you would have to create a new style and delete the old style via the Resource Manager. You will then have the option to replace the old style with the new style.

Is the scenic design hand- or computer-drawn? If electronic, you can always try asking for the original file. PDFs do retain scale information, so if it was produced correctly, you may be off by something simple, like a factor of 2. If the PDF is sized to fit to a page, and you need to scale, you can take advantage of scaling by points, the second option in the Modify>Scale dialog. Find either two points that should align between drawings, or two points in the PDF file with a known dimension. The longer the dimension, the more accurate the scaling will be. Press the button next to the “from” field, and click the two points in the PDF. The, either enter the known dimension in the From field or click the button, and click the corresponding points in your VW ground plan. You can then use the Move By Points tool to align the PDF to the plan. You can change layer visibilities mid-process with both tools, which should save you from needing the Xray mode.

Viewports permit overriding both layer order and layer colors. You should see a Revert Stacking Order button in the layer options for each viewport, but I'm not aware of a what to do this globally. You could at least use the Organization dialog to edit each viewport, which might be easier than trying to select each on in the drawing. There isn't a way to prevent this feature. However, the only thing that would create the order override is dragging the layers in each viewport's layer options. If one VP had the layers reordered, and then you copied that VP as the basis for others, that is the only way the overridden order would propagate.

By "see them," do you mean the beam of light or the light hitting a surface? If the former, the only way you will see the beam of light is if it has something to bounce off of, and lit fog will give you an atmosphere that will do that. You can control the amount of fog by editing the Renderworks background in your Resource manager. Ambient light just effectively raises the black point of the image. Turning on Ambient Occlusion in Lighting Settings can help it look less washed out. For a more realistic ambient light, you can turn on Environment Lighting, which now works in Shaded render mode. Another trick is to add directional and/or point render lights (via the visualization palette), and set them to not cast shadows and at a low level. This is a bit outdated, but I'll share my lighting options explainer here: https://express.adobe.com/page/6NSU11Hp6fwdb/?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fexpress.adobe.com%2Fpage%2F6NSU11Hp6fwdb%2Fembed.html&embed_type=overlay&context=expand

Yes =DATABASE(ALL & (IF(A3<>'', L=A3, L<>''))) Worksheet functions will work. The criteria keyword ALL doesn't seem to play nicely with formulas, so you have to provide a specific criteria that returns all layers.

Shameless plug: my Savvy Sequencer plug-in will sequentially number any existing object. You can store the number in the object name or an attached record, or you can automatically place text objects on each line. https://benghiatlighting.com/software/product/savvy-sequencer-2/#description

If possible, I strongly recommend turning the venue to match the final plot orientation before you start drafting the plot. All your text is going to orient with regards to the page, even if you are working in rotated plan or rotate a viewport 90.

Not possible for many reasons, the least of which is that functions don't receive any data about the worksheet that is calling them.

This has to be done in the SDK. It's actually fairly similar to adding a function to the Vectorscript API.

A long follow-up to this thread, but I wanted to announce that Savvy Position Label for 2025 now includes several worksheet functions that can extract information from rigging objects and hanging positions. The functions also work inside data tags. See details here: https://benghiatlighting.com/support/docs/savvy_position_label/worksheet-functions.html

@NickSolyom, I agree with your general strategy of using a symbol for the LED rather than turning scenic elements into Lighting Devices, with the possible exception of dynamic visualization. For static renders, I'm more inclined just to use glow textures with class visibility/overrides. Even for a dynamic visualization, I would likely de-couple the plot at model at that point, and use the visualizer's glowing object tools. For orthogonal views, I'll use Design Layer Section Viewports with "Flatten" enabled, from which you can have a 2D workflow. For isometric views, I'll either use a PDF (either mine or from the scenic drawings), or make a Design Layer Viewport, set the view, and convert it to lines or polygons. You can also go to an isometric view, align the working plane to the view, and then move the working plane above all the scenic elements, then look at the working plane to restore the view. Lighting Devices don't like to insert on working planes, but if you insert 2D symbols using the symbol tool, then convert to Lighting Devices, they will be aligned correctly. This seems to be a very wonky method, though. I had never thought to try Lighting Devices in viewport annotations. After a quick test, data exchange works as expected while you are editing the annotation, but as soon as you exit the annotation, things go very, very wrong, to the extent that I think this is a bug. As a side note, I picked up a method for showing LED set LX from a project, and I've adapted my practical symbol to be unique for each color combination. Here's some examples:

https://developer.vectorworks.net/index.php?title=VS:AddToPIOStyleEdit I have to confess that I’m not sure to which plug-in event these calls should be added, but I’m guessing either widgetPrep or InitXProps

And for anyone following along who's not familiar: https://benghiatlighting.com/software/product/beamviz-7

@mjm Thanks for the props! BeamViz 7 is indeed out. I'm still finishing up on the help and marketing materials, but this version adds a few new rendering tools, including edge control. Edge applies to gobos, shutters, and iris. Left to "barrel in" and right to "barrel out." The other key new feature is the ability to attach the source point to a Rigging Object. (Completely optional, of course.)

Do you have the Clip Cube turned on?