Gonda

September 26, 2023

Thanks! Never thought to look at the top level of the scripting link on the developer site. Only looked at the Funciton Reference.

Cheers!

September 25, 2023

Hey Folks,

Does anyone know if there is any central documentation for new/updated/deprecated functions in VW2024? I've been looking around and haven't found anything short of clicking on every single function in the function reference.

Cheers,

-g

Multi User Save Check · September 25, 2023

As someone who works on a lot of projects that are shared with others, but where the built-in collaboration features are lacking/don't work:

When a file is saved create a checksum. Before a file is saved, re-read the file and see if the checksum of the current file matches the checksum from when you opened it. If it matches, save as normal, if it doesn't match, at least alert the user that the original file has changed and make them either confirm the save or give the option to do a "Save As..."

We have run into a number of instances where User A opens a file, then User B opens a file, User B then saves and closes the file followed by User A. As a result of this, User B's changes are obliterated but there is no indication that this has happened. This is mostly an issue when files are being shared via cloud service that integrates into a local machine (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc)

September 17, 2023

Did you ever get to the bottom of this problem?

Cheers

March 18, 2023

Hey All,

So, installed the Dialog Builder through the Partner Products section...

Once I restarted VW, I did see the DB Floating Tool Palette but it only has 4 items:

A. Test Run

B. Tools

C. Renumberer

D. Static Text

I've poked around the workspace editor to see if I was missing something (menu, adding tools to the palette, etc), but for the life of me I can't find the tools to actually layout things in DB (buttons, text boxes, popup's, etc)...

Am I just missing something incredibly obvious? Is DB broken?

Running VW2023 SP4 on MacOS Ventura on Apple Silicon.

Cheers,

-g

March 24, 2022

Hi All,

So...was just working on a drawing with a bunch of truss and fixtures. When I went to move the truss, VW decided it was smarter than me and moved all of my fixtures as well. Now, I can understand it doing this if the truss had been converted to a lighting position, but given that it wasn't, the truss and fixtures were on seperate layers...

I guess my question ultimately is, is there a way to basically have VW ONLY do what I tell it to as opposed to it randomly adding objects to a selection?

Cheers,

-gonda

April 4, 2021

As an update...I created a new label legend and tried to apply it to a unit that had succesfully had a label legend applied. Applying the new label legend via the context menu ONLY changed the legend for the first cell of the unit regardless of which cell I had selected or if All were selected...

Clearly, broken...

Cheers,

-gonda

April 4, 2021

Well...ballz....just tried this again...

So...I finally got it to work. At least for me, the only way it works is to make the label legend active. But specifically, selecting 'Make Active' from the Resource Browser doesn't seem to work. I had to go into the Label Legend Manager and make it active there. After doing that, when I inserted a new instance of the zipstrip, the label legend did the right thing for all the cells. If the label legend was not active upon insertion, even applying the label legend failed to get it to do the right thing. Chalk one more half-broken thing up for VW2021.....

Cheers,

-gonda

April 4, 2021

@Jesse Cogswell So, I've tried applying the legend with individual cell's selected via the 'Edit Cell' dropdown as well as to the <All> option...same result both ways...

@JBenghiat I am trying this with the standard Altman ZS-3 Symbol from the standard Vectorworks Library. If I edit the symbol, it contains three symbols: the L, C, and R parts of the light. I've looked inside each of those symbols and they only contain either groups or extrudes...

Any other ideas? Silly question...are y'all on Windows or MacOS?

Cheers,

-gonda

April 4, 2021

So, I've tried creating a Label Legend base on the full Altman ZS-3 Symbol:

I also created one based on just the Center Sub-Symbol:

When I apply either legend I get the following:

If it helps, I'm running 2021SP3.1 on Windows...also, as far as I can tell, there is no way to select an individual 'cell'.

Cheers,

-gonda

April 3, 2021

Hey All,

So, maybe I'm missing something obvious, but with the changes to the way multi-cell units are handled, how does one deal with label legends for these changes? When I have tried to create a label legend for a fixture, it only seems to give me the option for a single 'channel' field. In the VW2021 docs, there is a picture showing multiple channels/dimmers for an instrument, but all of the references in the documentation that I can find only seems to deal with single cell units as opposed to multi cell...

FWIW, I'm trying to set up a label legend for a 6' Ministrip...for now, I'm using the Altman 6' Zipstrip symbol since the L&E Ministrip symbol seems to be borked as far as multi-cell implementation.

Cheers,

-gonda

November 20, 2020

Hi All,

Has anyone noticed that beam drawing is funky with 2021? In an top view the edge of the beam lands at ~x=20'. When I switch to a left/right view, the edge of the beam is being drawn at ~x=21'9". Has anyone else noticed this behavior? Also, beam drawing for a side light unit is fine for a straight side shot but as soon as I try to tip it upwards by anything more than % degrees, the beam drawing goes crazy and projects the beam several hundred feet with an artifical top cut.

Thoughts?

Cheers,

-gonda

November 20, 2020

I understand that but this is a desktop machine that ONLY has a 5700XT. The processor does not have onboard graphics available. When setting graphics options the only option given is for the 5700XT

Cheers,

-g

November 17, 2020

Hey All,

Has anyone else encountered VW hanging on 'Resetting Bounds' when opening a backup file? Several times now, after VW crashes, when I attempt to open a backup file, it takes VW ~20 minutes to open the file.

Currently running VW2021 with SP1 on Windows 10 with all updates & driver updates applied. AMD Processor, 5700XT video card & 32 gigs of RAM.

Cheers,

-gonda

November 16, 2020

Yup. There's only 1 GPU and it's driver is updated.

Cheers,

-g

November 16, 2020

Hey All,

Has anyone else been having massive performance & stability issues with 2021 on Windows 10? I'm running Windows 10 x64 (all up to date) with SP1. I have been experiencing random crashes (no hang, no error message, VW just is gone), ridiculous amounts of spinning blue balls waiting on operations with no indications of progress. My machine is a Ryzen 3900 w/ a 5700 XT video card and 32 gig of RAM yet 2021. Has anyone else been having similar issues? I have tried clean installs as well as not migrating user folders. Anyone have thoughts? Frankly it's to the point where I practically need to bill more time because I'm sitting on my thumbs while VW does...something.

Cheers,

-gonda

January 12, 2020

Hi All,

So, I'm running into a bit of an issue with Spotlight's Data Cable Worksheet. Apparently, the option to include the 'End Label Text' in the worksheet generation doesn't exist. I figured it would be fairly trivial to write a python script to crawl all Data Cable Objects in the drawing and read the 'Start Label Text' & 'End Label Text' fields and write them into the 'User Field 1' & 'User Field 2' fields. The following code accomplishes this for a lighting device:

import vs

def xyz(current_light):
    xypoint = vs.GetSymLoc(current_light)
    zpoint = vs.Get3DCntr(current_light)
    vs.SetRField(current_light,'Lighting Device','User Field 7',str('{:.3f}'.format(xypoint[0]/12)) + "'")
    vs.SetRField(current_light,'Lighting Device','User Field 8',str('{:.3f}'.format(xypoint[1]/12)) + "'")
    vs.SetRField(current_light,'Lighting Device','User Field 9',str('{:.3f}'.format(zpoint[1]/12)) + "'");
    
vs.ForEachObject(xyz,"INSYMBOL & (PON='Lighting Device')");

I adapted this code as follows to try to get it to work for a Data Cable:

import vs

def label2user(current_cable):
    start = vs.GetRField(current_cable,'Data Cable VW','Start Label Text')
    end = vs.GetRField(current_cable,'Data Cable VW','End Label Text')
    vs.SetRField(current_cable,'Data Cable VW','Rack ID',"barf")
    vs.SetRField(current_cable,'Data Cable VW','Box ID',str(end))
    
vs.ForEachObject(label2user,"INSYMBOL & INVIEWPORT & (PON='Data Cable VW')");

Unfortunately, the second chunk of code doesn't work. I have verified by inserting a vs.AlrtDialog() into the code that it is properly reading the values from each Data Cable Object. Unfortunately, the vs.SetRField() commands seems to fail. I have also tried to write to other fields but the same results keep occurring.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Cheers,

-gonda

September 13, 2018

Has anyone else successfully gotten VW2019 to log in to the cloud services? I'm on Windows 10 Build 17134 and whenever I try to select the Login/Sign Up menu option, I get the following dumper to the Vectorworks Services Log File:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "Vectorworks Cloud Services.py", line 5, in <module>
File "DCC.pyc", line 9, in <module>
File "PySide\QtGui.pyc", line 12, in <module>
File "PySide\QtGui.pyc", line 10, in __load
ImportError: DLL load failed: The operating system cannot run %1.

Cheers,

-gonda

June 7, 2018

I'm trying to set the values each time an object is inserted

-g

June 5, 2018

So, I tried doing this with states....i.e. a variable is defined and checked to see if it had been changed from an initial value but it doesn't seem that the plugin retains the state of set variables between events...or am I missing something?

June 4, 2018

Thank you sir

-g

June 4, 2018

@JBenghiat

So, what I was envisioning is that when you click on the tool's icon, a dialog is presented to ask for some initial values (this is a whole other issue of getting it to appear every time). The plug-in then uses these answers to set some initial values for parameters for when the plug-in is first inserted. Following that, these values will only be updated by the user via the OIP and will then be used in turn to insert some text onto the drawing.

The kicker, is that I need to get input from the user before I can set the defaults and from what you're saying, these values are generated before any event happens. It seems, from what I can tell, that the values that appear in the OIP for each widget get loaded from the defaults sometime after the completion of the kObjOnInitXProperties event but before any other event happens.

As a sidebar, how do you put VW into Developer Mode? I've looked through all the various preferences (both application and document) on both Windows and Mac and can't seem to find where that setting is...

@Miguel Barrera

That was my thought; however, unless I'm missing something, it seems that a plug-in does not maintain state between events (i.e. global variables). Initially, I would set a global variable firstRun that is tested. If it was the first run, assign defaults, if it wasn't carry-on but from what I can tell this behavior can't be accomplished without some way to store state...

-g

June 3, 2018

That's basically what I'm doing. It's just that I need to have slightly over 100 params (~125) and to get the next chunk to start at, say 201, I need to sit there and add and uniquely name 75 unnecessary parameters...was just hoping there was a way to get around it especially since the parameter dialog has no support for editing multiple items at a time (to set a default, change type, etc) and the keyboard navigation support is also poor.

-g

June 3, 2018

So, I just tested the follow:

vs.SetRField(paramHandle,'Custom Object1','LS3D','789') #Where LS3D is the parameter name as defined in the plug-in defintion and it is a Y coordinate field.

When I place this line as the final statement at the end of the kObjOnInitXProperties handler, nothing seems to happen.

When I place this line in the Reset Event handler, it is executed; however, on subsequent calls, this overwrites any user assinged values...

I've also insterted an AlrtDialog() that displays each event number before it is handled and as far as I can see, the kObjOnInitXProps is only called once (unless you go back into the plug-in definition)....And then a reset event is generated....

Thougts?

-g

June 3, 2018

So, vsoAddParamWidget only cares that the names match and not necessarily the ID's?

-g

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