jcogdell

Hi @DanMJ The main issue here is that Braceworks can't do any form of Ground support calculation, only suspended rigging systems can be calculated. We are looking at adding ground support calculations to Braceworks but it is still in the research phase of development at this time as it requires a complete rebuild of the Braceworks back end. Normally you could, in this example, attach extra hoists or deadhangs at the ends of the upper truss line to check that it isn't deflecting to badly, it wouldn't give you any usable data about how the ground support performs, but it would tell you whether you need any extra pickups to support the truss (like you have with the center point). However because Tomcat refuses to give us any of the structural data for their trusses that Braceworks requires, you would only see the forces acting on the truss and not how the truss reacts to those forces (whether it deflects etc...).

Hi @ELP What application is the MVR being created in? Its possible that the program exporting the original MVR is not exporting the format correctly, or that it is using the 1.2 standard, which in theory shouldn't cause a problem but may well do so since you are on 2020. The support for the GDTF 1.2 was only added in 2022 sp3, as it required us to add support for the GLTf file format, which was a fairly major project by itself. Otherwise you could try looking in the general scene description xml inside the MVR and check what the coordinates are for some of the objects, they should be in mm to 5 or 6 decimal places You will need to change the file extension to .zip to do so

Hi Drew I just did a quick check and H40V corners are losing their connection measurement definitions if they are inserted after a straight section, I'll put a bug report in to have it fixed. In the meantime you can fix the issue yourself, so that you can continue working without waiting for us insert the corner into your file and then right click on it to open the context menu select customize truss symbol data to open the Truss properties dialogue (its important to note this is not the same as the truss properties in the OIP shape pane) in the right hand geometry pane of the dialogue look at the L1, L2, etc fields and make sure these are correctly filled in, the diagram shows what each measurement should be for example for the H40V-C003 corner (the standard 90° corner) L1, L2 and L3 should have 406mm in them. hit Ok to confirm the changes and exit the dialogue Auto-connect will now work correctly so you don't have to do this again save the updated corner symbol into a favorites, user or workgroup library for future projects. Look in the 52V library, It looks like the library folder has a typo in the name. I'll get a bug report in for it.

Sorry but I don't have progress or news to report about this at the moment, I'll pass the extra info onto the developers and see if i can find anything out

Hi Matteo Thanks for the feedback, I'll add it into our developers system. If it helps the new cable tools skill video's are now available on the Vectorworks university, https://university.vectorworks.net/ Gruße Jesse

@39Tech please post the file, I'll have a look when I'm back from Pro light and sound to see what is happening

@Tolga Just a quick follow up, the software bug that was the root cause (it was corrupting the 6 way corners magnet definition settings) and prevented content from fixing the symbols, has been fixed in the SP3 release. This thread explains how to fix the corner symbols themselves

Hi Greg I just had a quick look at your file The original issue issue with the cable seems to be that the 2D part of the cable is displaying as a closed polyline, this was a bug in earlier builds of Spotlight. Oddly I found that when I forced the cable object to recalculate by changing into a 3D view with the cable selected, opening the cable configuration dialogue, exiting and changing back into top/plan the 2D geometry reset and started to display correctly. Was this file started in SP3 or earlier version? The second issue looks like it is caused by how cables and cable paths interact, at the moment cables can enter or exit a cable path anywhere along the path and will try to do so where-ever the auto-connect logic says the most efficient point to leave the path to reach the end point is. Another factor is that the cable path on the projector truss is not linked into the main path on Cable truss A. When these 2 are combined the cable tries to take the most direct route between the cable path on the cable truss and the end point. The easiest way to get this to work correctly is to connect the 2 cable paths together and then draw the cable in a 3D view, this will ensure that the cable follows the path correctly. Also make sure that you have the class and layer options set to show/snap/modify others when drawing cables or the cable will interact with other objects correctly.

What service pack and build number of Spotlight are you running? and can you post the file so I can have a quick look to see if I can find the problem?

This is definitely a bug, and not one that I have already seen. As far as I can tell the consumer component is not correctly connecting with the output component in the lights I'll get a bug report opened for it, What version of windows or MacOS are you running?

Hi Andrew Can you post the file, so I can have a look? Also what Service pack and build number are you on There are a number of issues at this point with the power palette but from your images I can't tell whether this is one of the known issues or something new Gruße Jesse

Ah I thought you were using them in a design layer not in a viewport annotation. That sounds more like a bug to me in this case, I'll get a bug report opened for it. I'll make an enhancement request for this

As far as I know this is not a bug but the intended behavior of this mode of the Data tag tool. The selected eligible object insertion mode was added in 2022 to provide a better insertion workflow in Design layers due to this behavior.

Hi Chris You will need to make a Service Select fixture request to have the fixtures added to the Vision libraries, this will then make the modes available in Spotlight. The other option is to reach out to the manufacturer and ask if they will create the GDTF's for the fixtures. If you only need the DMX footprint you can manually add that into the Lighting devices properties as long as there isn't a specific mode selected. Gruße Jesse

Hi @ajpen Can you dm me a copy of both the MVR and the Spotlight file so I can take a look? Gruße Jesse

This is a result of a known issue that corrupted some of our truss content. The underlying bug (which has been fixed in service pack3) caused 6 way corners to lose part of their data about how the corner behaves. Now the the bug itself is fixed you can manually fix the corner symbol by right clicking on it and choosing the Customise Truss Data command in the context menu In the truss properties dialogue look at the right hand side of the dialogue and you will see that the P1 measurement is 0,0,0 (X, Y, Z) this should be set to be 146,0,0 (I'm using mm so correct for your document units) hit ok to exit the dialogue and the same in the 2 following warning dialogues. This will fix the symbol definition So that you don't have to do this again in the future save the edited symbol into your favorites, user or workgroup folder

There are two ways to edit the color of truss symbols if you only need the 2D geometry changed, go to the Spotlight Preferences 'Loads and Rigging' section (in File>Document Settings) and activate the 'Modify Truss Object Color' check box. This allows you to use change the color of truss symbol using either the attribute palette or based on its class. If you want to edit the truss symbol definition itself to create a custom colored truss library then you need to do the editing from inside the resource manager. Import the truss symbol or symbols you want to edit in to the active file resources, right click on the symbol and select edit 2D component. You can now edit the 2D geometry's fill and line color exit the edit interface and repeat the process but select edit 3D component. Again use the attribute palette to make the changes. Make sure to save the edited symbol with a new name so that you don't accidentally overwrite it if you need to re import the original library version. Live data viz works in a similar fashion to setting up a report or worksheet, you have to set up the criteria to define what objects and bit of data it will work with for this example make sure you have at least a couple of truss objects of different lengths inserted to access live data viz look for the glasses icon at the right hand side of the view bar and click on it. if its not there use the triangle at the end of the bar to turn it on once you have clicked on the icon select new Data Visualization in the menu You should now be in the New data Visualization dialogue, first give the the new data vis a name Define the object criteria for what is going to be affected, this could be an all objects, by name, by class etc... There is a long list of options. For a trusses leave this as all objects Now set the display criteria, this controls what data will be colored and how, First set the color drop down, this defines the type of data that will be worked with for example object using record or object using parameter. Your choice here defines what options are available in the drop-downs to the right of the colors drop-down. For trusses use object with parameter Use the 2 drop-downs to the right to define what specific bit of data you will color, for this example set the top one to Truss and the bottom to length You should now see several lengths in the list below the drop-downs corresponding to the truss lengths in your file, hit the auto color button to assign each a color override, you may need to check the color settings if only the fill gets assigned a color. Hit ok to save it and exit now click on the dat avis icon and you shuld see your new data visualization in the bottom half of the menu, click on it to activate it. In the design layer the trusses will be colored based on their lengths. You can also use data vis in sheet layer viewports and it will provide a handy legend saying what each color corresponds too Here some links to the Vecrtoworks university about data vis https://university.vectorworks.net/mod/page/view.php?id=282 https://university.vectorworks.net/mod/scorm/player.php?a=173&currentorg=articulate_rise&scoid=346 and the help page https://app-help.vectorworks.net/2022/eng/VW2022_Guide/Views/Viewing_the_drawing_by_data_or_by_attributes.htm?rhmapfs=true#h

Not at the moment, there are two options to avoid using the data Use data tags (but at this point there isn't any way to get the tag to color like the label does), set it to display the Hook weight equivalent and distro/properties fields. Another possibly better route is to use the Spotlight Report command to create a Hoist worksheet and use that to rename the hoists back to the original IDs store the hoist ID in the name field (or any other user defined field), this can be done in the worksheet or when you first created the hoists using auto-numbering Create the worksheet, set it to display Hoist ID and Hoist Name as columns (or the field you duplicated the Hoist ID in) once the IDs have been reset open the worksheet, select the complete name column contents (without the header) and copy and paste it into the ID column. This will update all the hoists back to the original ID's in one go I'm putting in several enhancement requests based on the points you raise here Add the hoist label coordinates back into the hoist properties To have the Reset Braceworks command looked at with a view to adding some user controlled options to control whether user defined ID's like the Hoist ID is reset or whether only the objects internal id (the UUID) is affected To have Braceworks color data tags attached to hoists (and potentially other rigging objects) the same as it does with labels.

@capital_Designs Were the hanging position symbols created in a 2022 file or are they resources that you have forward ported from an older file or project? Also are you in 2D top plan or a 3D view when inserting the light or dragging them on the hanging position? I'm working on a win 10 machine which may be another factor in why it works for me (and is relevant for the bug report)

Have you set the label to use a separate class from the hoist? If you have check that classes fill attribute setting If you haven't use the Hoist objects classes button to set the label to a separate class and give it a different fill to see if that fixes the issue

@Jordan Grimes was this file created using 2022? If so did you use the current updated truss libraries (with magnets) or a truss library forward ported from 2021? Personally I can't reproduce this issue in 2022 , but I have seen it before in previous versions of Spotlight (2021 and earlier) and the solution there was to turn off the Rigging-Truss- Insertion Points class (at least for me).

I can't answer all of this, so I'll comment on the bits I can and reach out to the dev team about the bits I can't, The top right example is behaving as I would expect, except for the fact that the bumper is overlapping with the truss geometry since it has a hanging angle. This doesn't seem to affect being able to make the Braceworks calculation and when a re-hung the truss with the same hanging angle as the bumper it also calculates correctly. In the top left example the reason it didn't calculate is that there are 2 errors, the truss line is not correctly draw, the 2 truss sections are vertically offset from each other. This is why there is a truss cross displaying at the join of the 2 truss section. the Arrays hanging support parameter is set to 'two hoists', which will prevent it from connecting to the truss as it assumes the truss is a single connection point. This is probably a feature enhancement as I have seen plenty of arrays hung with multiple points (clamps, slings, Steelflex, etc..) from trusses when I was still working as a tech. Once these issues are addressed it will calculate (I used calculate selection). In the case of the referenced examples (in both the main and the reference file) Auto-connect is not registering the connection between the rigging objects and the arrays, there is no connection highlight when trying to connect inside either file. I tried playing around with both files a bit, the only other thing I noticed was that the trusses are not at the same trim height as the arrays (if you look in at them in 3D they are on the floor. Moving them to the correct trim height however made no difference I still couldn't get it to calculate correctly I've opened a bug report for this but this is beyond my personal experience, so I'll need to wait till I've had a chance to discuss this with the dev team.

Hi Charles Nice workaround, Seeing this has given me another idea for a workaround, Create a custom adapter plate to link the hoists to the vertical truss, effectively it would be a custom truss T-corner symbol. This would have a couple of advantages, you would only need to create the plate once for each truss type you use, so no need to set up a bumper each time you need to hang a vertical truss because it would be a standard truss symbol there wouldn't be any need to create custom symbols for the vertical truss and lights for each different configuration used, just draw the truss as normal and attach the lights. on the down side it would require a bit more work for the initial creation of the adapter plate symbols

The error is caused when a supporting hoist is being pushed up by the truss it is supporting due to how the truss line is deflecting elsewhere on the line, in this case it looks like adding the extra outriggers and the associated weight of the lights they are supporting is pushing the end of the truss line up which is in turn pushing the hoist up slightly. Have a look at the vertical deflection force lines. In most cases to fix the issue you can either use the chain shorten field on the hoist to adjust it manually or turn on compensate drops to correct this automatically Its meant to notify you when a load object is supported by two structural elements (pipes or trusses), for example a drape that extends between two truss lines or when a load object is close enough to 2 structural objects that it could be connected to both. Its a warning and won't stop the calculation. However there is currently a bug where this message is getting triggered when it shouldn't, which will be why it is triggering incorrectly for the light on the left hand truss in your image

Thanks for explaining this in more detail, I didn't actually realize this option existed, Can you attach a single hoist? It may be that the array has the Hanging Support drop-down set to single hoist in its properties, which would explain why the array connect to the truss. If this is not the case can you send me an example file to have a look at?