jcogdell

The other trusses are also not correctly set up either, because you have used CLS as the type in every case and CLS_**** as the 'connectable with'. Yes you can set the truss up this way but it breaks the Auto-connect connection checking function, enabling you to join sections of truss together that are fundamentally not compatible, for example in your file you can join the CLS 400mm to the CLS TRI truss together, which should not be possible if the 'type' field and 'connectable with' fields are used correctly. The dimensions in the truss properties dialogue are what braceworks uses to perform its calculations and check that everything is correctly connected and orientated to each other. Even the corners that are calculating are not displaying correcting in a 3D view, this shows they are also not correctly set up.

There are 2 possibilities that I can think of either you have accidentally resized the Record formats pane of the Data tab, try hovering the mouse over the line directly under the Data sheets drop-down menu if that doesn't display the resize cursor the other option is that you may have selected a simplified data sheet in the data sheet drop down that closed the record formats pane

Hi Nathaniel Sorry I missed your PM I've looked over your trusses and there seems to be 2 issues, both related to the truss properties In the truss properties dialogue the 'type' field is what the 'Connectable with field' is checking against to see if a truss section can connect. This means that the fields should match for auto-connect to link the sections into a system, For example the CLS 200mm truss should use CLS_200 in both the 'Type' field and the 'Connectable with' field. The second is related to the dimensions, for the trusses to connect correctly, with the auto-connect crosses correctly positioned, the dimensions in the truss properties have to be correct and correspond to the 3D geometry of the truss symbol. using the CLS 200mm 3m straight section as an example, the height and width should be 257mm (as measured inside the symbol) The tricky one is that the CLS 200mm box corner is larger than the CLS 200mm straight trusses, 276mmx276mm. This means you will need to vertically offset the corner 3D geometry in the symbol for it to line up correctly with the straight sections, in this example -10.5mm on the Z axis. let me know if there is anything else I can help with

Hi Mark This is possible but you will need to create a custom shackle pickup symbol, There are 2 things that must be correctly configured for it to work though, First is make sure the the shackle's position inside the pick up symbol has the correct 'z' height as this defines the shackles insertion point in relation to the suspended object, if you are using one of the standard shackle symbol from an existing pickup the reference point is the lower loci Second is that the new pick up symbol needs to have the 'SlingRecord' attached and with the correct distance entered, as this controls the position of the hoists hook relative to the suspended object Below is a quick and dirty example I created by duplicating and editing one of the existing adapter symbols, deleted the adapter geometry, re positioned the shackle, I used 120mm, which is just a rough estimate rotated it 90° on its z axis and updated the SlingRecord distance field to 120mm If you want eye bolts or other hardware for visualisation purposes these can be added to the pick up symbol geometry as well

If you are using a laptop, this may be a hardware issue, many laptop brands do not phyiscally connect the 3D graphics cards to all of the possible outputs, I know from my own experience with MSI laptops that they only connect the integrated intel graphics to the thunderbolt usb port. As a result when I tried to use my thunderbolt hub to run my external monitors VW would crash whenever I tried to move it onto one of the monitors connected through the hub. The only solution (for me at least) was to connect the monitor that I wanted to use for VW directly to the dedicated HDMI output.

The new 2021 preview cable tools provide a simpler way to accomplish this, all connector types used by the new tools are stored in a editable XML file, which can be easily shared with other users. The 'CableConnectors.xml' file can be found in Vectorworks 2021/libraries/Defaults/Cable Tools and can be edited with any simple text editor to add additional connectors. You will also find the rest of the preview cable tools content their as well if you need to add new cable parts or distributors

There is a worksheet function that can convert text to numbers The thread linked below provides some good info about how to use the '=Value()' function

I did some more digging and tried replacing your custom lighting device definitions with the library defaults, this fixed the 'Lights4/' issue, at least for me. Let me know if it works. (I used the replace instrument command in the Spotlight menu) I found the the .lit issue is behaving as you described, the last group of fixtures to have their mode altered display correctly without the .lit but it doesn't seem to stick and reverts to displaying the .lit when you edit the next group of fixtures.

Hi Dan I've gone through your file and figured out what is going on When I opened it and looked at the fixture data in the OIP none of them seem to have fixture modes assigned, despite displaying the data in the worksheet. I'm not sure how this has happened (could be the result of a crash or something else) but if you reassign the fixture modes in the mode drop down and then recalculate your worksheet it should display the correct fixture mode data. The bug regarding displaying the .lit file ending in worksheets is in Service pack 5, which was recently released. let me know if this doesn't fix the problem

@DBLD could you pm me your file for the bug report?

I have no idea about Lights4/ The only thing it reminds me of is a file path name, but why it is displaying in this way in a worksheet I have no idea. I can verify that it is definitely a bug and will open a bug report for it.

The .lit after the mode name denotes that it is a Vision fixture (each mode is a separate fixture in Vision), this is a known issue and is being worked on.

As far as I can tell the fixtures are working correctly with DMX and I have control of the RGB channels. I think the problem you are encountering is that to be able to use the RGB controls you have to make sure the 'cross fade to color' channel is set to 100%.

What console are you using? and which DMX protocol (Artnet, sACN, ...) Does the the DMX viewer show that Vision is receiving DMX on the correct channels? Are you using the default Vision .lit fixture files or a GDTF? Which specific mode of the sky panel s360 are you using? (each mode is a separate fixture if you are using the Vision .lit files)

Currently there is no way that a user can create a standard Vision fixture (a .lit file), however there are several potential work arounds The first would be to leverage the Vision RGB emissive textures. You would need to correctly set up the geometry of your set pieces, so that each area that you want to have LED tape in, is a separate piece of geometry and you would have to use MVR file type to get the object into Vision. The main drawback of this approach is that you can only set up the emissive texture in Vision and not in Spotlight. Another possibility would be to try using the GDTF fixture builder to create custom lighting device based on your set piece design or for LED tape. The GDTF builder is available on the GDTF share website, linked below https://gdtf-share.com/