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jcogdell

Vectorworks, Inc Employee
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  1. @LiteDoctor If you save them in your user or workgroup folder you shouldn't need to import them whenever you start a new file, as long as they are in the correct library location the cable tool will be able to find them.
  2. Have you set a layer elevation? Please post the file so I can take a look, I've not been able to replicate this myself yet.
  3. As @Stefan B. said previously you have to edit the CableConnector.xml file found in the application library folder. There is a video in the Cable tools learning path on the Vectorworks University that goes through the entire process. https://university.vectorworks.net/course/index.php?mycourses=0&tagfilter[category]=content+category-5-entertainment&tagfilter[type]=content+type-8-learning+paths&tagfilter[difficulty]=0&search=cable+tools&langfilter[]=0
  4. You can't turn truss cross off completely but there is an automatic classing option for them in the Spotlight Document preferences load and rigging section. Use this to assign them to a class and set the visibility to invisible. The setting will auot class all the existing truss cross objects and any new ones created.
  5. Here's the screenshot of the file you posted, it has a couple of things that need to be dealt with before it can be calculated. To get it to calculate correctly I did the following set the braceworks safety factor to useability, a safety factor is required here in Europe but its not necessary for this and simplifies the numbers a bit used the insert connection tool to connect all the pipes to the pod with a fixed 5kn truss cross then I used calculate all to get the complete system calculation lastly to check whether the pipes are correctly transfering the forces I also ran a calculate selection without the truss crosses or pipes selected As you can see there is a significant difference in the loads acting on Hoists M5 and M3 when the pipes are excluded from the calculation, which clearly shows that the pipes' load is being applied to the rest of the system.
  6. Hi @cglow I've had a look at your file, The loads are getting correctly transfered from the pipes to the trusses, you can test this by using the calculate selection command and compare the results between including the pipes and excluding them. Theres a significant difference in the loads on the screen left hoists. I think the issue is the truss cross labels. The way they display the forces acting on the truss cross itself can be confusing and we need to find a better way to display the results. The truss cross labels display the Force Normal (Nx). In structural engineering terms the Normal (Nx), is defined as the opposing or reactive force to the shear (Vy, Vx) acting on the system at the calculation point. Braceworks uses the convention/assumption that a positive force is acting downwards and a negative acting upwards, in this case the shear (Vy, Vx) is acting downwards at the truss cross, so its a positive value, the normal will display as a negative value as its the opposite to the shear. I'm not a structural engineer so I may be over simplifying this. Here's a link to a website that I found helpful when I was learning about this https://www.makerlessons.com/coretechs/structural-forces
  7. Not yet. We are working on an update to the cable and power planning which may provide a solution, it will be definetly possible to do this in a worksheet but I'm not sure about a data tag.
  8. use the projector tilt field in the OIP
  9. @Stefan B. I've done an initial look and as far as I can tell there are 2 main issues All 4 example lines are correctly failing, based on the point loads and rigging configuration. The calculation results look broadly correct to me in the calculation overview, except for how the 2 hoists with negative loads are behaving and being reported. Issues First looks to be the error message itself on hoist M6, I would expect to see the message 'The hoist is slack; system is not supported. The chain is under too much pressure and will not participate in calculations (in the Braceworks Preferences, Second order analysis is selected).' Instead the message 'the chain is under pressure and has failed' displays. Hoist M3 hasn't triggered the error message, despite the truss deflection causing it to be pushed upwards by a similar amount to hoist m6. This should trigger the warning, which suggests the internal threshold for the error message needs to be looked at. The status of the Hoists in the Calculation overview, Hoist workload tab. I think fixing the first 2 issues will likely solve this, since M3 will change status when the warning message correctly triggers. I'll get the Jira's opened
  10. @Stefan B. I've been discussing this further with our dev team to get more info and they raised a couple of points/questions Tolerances, Braceworks has a number of tolerances built into the calculation process, such as the geometric precision and ax deflection in the settings, how do these compare to RSTAB? (I have no experience of using RSTAB so I can't answer this myself) The hoist is designed to allow a certain amount of upwards pressure to account for the flexible nature of the pickup, from the images posted we can't tell if this is working correctly in this case. There is a braceworks error that should trigger when Braceworks calculates that the cahin has to much slack and isn't supporting the system, which I think is what is happening here but the warning is not being triggered Message: The hoist is slack; system is not supported. The chain is under too much pressure and will not participate in calculations (in the Braceworks Preferences, Second order analysis is selected). From my discusion yesturday its possible that this is a bug or that the threshold to trigger the warning needs to be looked at. We will investigate Can you provide the file you used for this test?
  11. Braceworks, like most structural analysis programs has to assume that the hoists and their connections are rigid or it is almost impossible to calculate the system. This, from my understanding, is in line the assumptions a structural engineer has to make to be able to do the same calculation. Yes as you've highlighted the S3 hoist will have an upwards force excerted on it, but this will not cause the calculation to fail or to be unsafe to hang. Technically its still within the capacity of the truss and hoists (or atleast it looks to be from the images supplied), that is why Braceworks is not throwing up an error message. To look at this from a real world point of view how would an onsite rigging team deal with this issue? Mostly likely they would bump the S3 hoist up a couple of clicks to take the slack out of the sling or steelflex, if the hoist is not fully under load like this. You can do the same in Spotlight using the chain shorten field in the hoist properties, when you add a the equivalent of the length of a couple of chain links to the chain shorten field and then rerun the calcualtion the hoist will now have a positive load acting on it. Would adding a warning to better communicate this be useful?
  12. @Stefan B. What Braceworks calculation settings are you using?
  13. @Thomas_ Try training@vectorworks.net That should get you in direct contact witht he training team.
  14. @ajemutt What operating system are you using and what update and build of Vectorworks? I've tried to recreate the issue at my end and the drop down seems to be working correctly, it displays the availbel fixture modes for the chosen fixture. If you are requesting soem thing please let me know so I can update the report.
  15. This may be a bug, the fixture mode dropdown is meant to show the 'default' mode options for the fixture in the dropdown itself. I know this has been inconsistantly functional in the past. I'll open a bug report for it and see what can be done. This is something we already want to do with the fixture mode dialogue, I'll add this thread to the internal enhancement thaht is open on the fixture mode selection workflow
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