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Daniel Dickman

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Posts posted by Daniel Dickman

  1. Hey there,

     

    I have a worksheet with a number of lighting devices and positions. Each position is exactly the same fixture layout just at different rotations. I have modified all of the Z fixture heights on one position and I was hoping to just copy paste the updated Z locations in a worksheet and paste it on to the other fixtures but it seems  I can't edit any of the X,Y,Z locations via a worksheet. Anyone know why? In the worksheet I can edit channel and position name just not x,y,z locations.

  2. I'm working on some rack elevations, On my schematic I have some devices with the device names like "WX-MXL316498X" but the display tag is "CAD PC 1". On the rack elevation side, I frequently find myself wishing I could abbreviate an Equipment item's name similar to the Device Name/Display Tag functionality of schematic devices. If I change the name of the equipment item to "CAD PC 1" it breaks the link to the schematic device.

     

    Is there any way to display the Display Tag on an equipment item rather than the full device name?

     

    image.png.73e6303d22e364d308dc596dac7e5c17.png

  3. Hey all,

     

    In my drawings I like to color code my devices by discipline (lighting, audio, video, etc). Currently I'm using various device symbols that I've made for each discipline.

     

    image.png.bf73d25622bd9c9dc07e1a9f56bebb5f.png

     

    This works good enough but Its a bit of a manual process to select the right symbol for each device. Here is what one of my typical devices looks like using the custom device symbols.

     

    image.png.d87ee5127dc538bbe59cb9cd13cb7dae.png

     

    In addition to this, I have a record attached to each device where I define the discipline of the device for use in worksheets.

     

    image.png.0afc9f264d6c1ecfc427e1a0de4d6a9c.png


    Since I'm already defining the discipline in my "Device Additional Info" record, I would like to use Data Visualizations to help color code my devices based those values.

     

    My goal is that the data visualization only changes the color of the rectangle that is behind the device tag text. I do not want the data visualization to change the fill of the entire device object.

     

    Here is what I've attempted so far... I have created a new Device symbol named "Standard Device Label". In this symbol the rectangle behind the Device Tag text is set to a fill of black and a class of "Device Discipline Color"

     

    image.thumb.png.a50f9383f1df97c3ef81064f6f271e3f.png

     

    In my new Data Visualization, I set the criteria to "Class is "Device Discipline Color"

     

    image.png.daa43cb3347269017e31196c5f3ce58a.png

     

    image.thumb.png.dc61df2d0a771cd3dbac928cfec8a762.png

     

    With the criteria set, it says it finds objects that meet the criteria but I can't seem to get the colors to actually change when I define the discipline field in my record. 

     

    I understand that my record is attached to the device and not the rectangle inside the device symbol, so I assume that's why this doesn't work.

     

    Does anyone have ideas for a better approach?

     

     

  4. Hey Conrad, I got around to testing this in the metric template and can confirm the cable tag does not overlap with the arrow. Is there way for me to manually place the cable tag on the arrow line where I want? Similar to a normal polyline circuit.

     

    image.thumb.png.d5c986171445f2408a3efeaac790bf00.png

  5. 10 hours ago, Nikolay Zhelyazkov said:

    Hello @Daniel Dickman,

     

    Which version of Vectorworks are you using? In 2023 the records attached to the device get attached to the device symbol too, so you can add linked text in the symbol if you want to.

     

    Best Regards,

    Nikolay Zhelyazkov

    Ahhh I'm still in 2022, Our organization hasn't updated to 2023 yet.

     

    Thanks Nikolay

  6. On 5/16/2022 at 4:03 AM, Conrad Preen said:

    Here is Niko's Data Manager video

    tells you how to set up a data mapping so that your custom record is added to every new Device. You can also see examples of this in the ConnectCAD templates.

     

    This was a very helpful video! Thanks for posting!

     

    Is there anyway we can map text inside our Device Symbol (dev_label_generic for example) to our custom records? I can't seem to get my custom device labels to display text from these records.

     

    The only way I can get text from these records to display is by adding text directly inside of the device itself (as shown in the video).

  7. Ahh okay. So what I didn't realize is when you change Load Name it immediately changes the Instrument Type field to match, That's what made me think it was load name because I could see the name change when I would export new MVRs.

     

    Okay... so MA Name = VW Instrument type. Does that really make sense? I could easily change my instrument type fields to match what I want my MA naming to look like, but now that will break all of my instrument type columns in worksheets/lightwright.

     

    It really feels like we need a new Fixture Name field in future versions.

  8. First off I'm using VW22. I've been doing a lot of testing of the MVR export and importing into MA3. Overall the entire process is very easy and a huge improvement over the MA2 export plugin.

    One thing I am struggling with is fixture naming in MA3 vs Vectorworks. When you import your MVR in to MA3, MA associates its fixture name column with the Load Name column from Vectorworks. By default, Vectorworks just copies the Instrument Type into the Load Name field for each lighting device.

     

    image.png.9e2558fe56d6e10fc0e8db939479f24e.png

     

    Typically when I first import my MVR into MA3, I go through and give all of my fixtures logical names, so they are easier to understand in my fixture sheet.

     

    image.png.9224ff99cb8929ed5ce9943098eb45ef.png

     

    Now my challenge here comes when I need to reimport an MVR to MA3 in order to update some 3D positions in my rig. In Vectorworks I move my fixtures in 3D space as needed, I export MVR but now the MVR is going to overwrite all my neatly named fixtures in MA3.

     

    image.thumb.png.ae111265e8ce6622d6c25d5a3491de6a.png

     

    Obviously, the solution here is to update my Load Names in Vectorworks so they import the way I want them named in MA3. But I can't seem to easily apply bulk naming to this field via Spotlight numbering tool or via lightwright or worksheet. The only available field is called Load Information. But I need to edit Load Name.

     

    image.png.9db6036c72c0f10d3d9096adba267bfc.png

    Does anyone have any tricks to easily bulk edit the Load Name field? I really don't want to update this field 800 times manually.

     

    In the long term it doesn't seem like the Load Name field is really the best field to use for the MVR export tool, I wonder if VW needs to consider adding a Fixture Name Field to the Lighting Device record.

  9. Hey there,

     

    I have my light plot built in Vectorworks but my internal origin is very far from my rig due to constraints set by my organization our our BIM workflow. I have my user origin set in a much more usable location but if I export from my Vectorworks file to MVR and into MA3, the MA3 environment is massive and not usable. It seems Vectorworks is exporting the MVR using the internal original and not the user origin.

     

    Due to this issue, I have been copy/pasting my rig into a blank shuttle file in VW so that the origin is closer to the rig for the MA3 import. This works great for getting the rig into MA3 but if I later make updates to my lighting fixture positions and try to bring in the updated MVR export from the shuttle file, MA does not recognize the relationship between its existing fixtures and the incoming fixtures in the MVR. (MA3 tries to add duplicate fixtures instead of updating the existing ones)

     

    Has anyone else ran into a similar issue? Would be nice to have an option in the MVR export window to use the user origin instead of the internal origin. I think this would negate my need for the shuttle file and the MVR relationship between VW and MA3 would stay alive.

  10. On 5/28/2022 at 6:20 AM, elc said:

    Hi @Mark Aceto

    depending on the amount of devices this sounds like a good approach.

     

    Another questions: is there a function for floors? Or are you just talking about the design layers that you use as floors?

    In your image you are using the room function on the schematic layer, right? As far as I know, this does not work with the room data attached to devices (schematic layer) only with equipment (in the rack elevation layer)? Or how did you set this up?

     

     

    Best,

    George

     

    I don't think there is any built in functionality for floors but I have also found myself wanting to define more than just a room name as some times my projects span multiple buildings/rooms/floors.

    In the interim I just name the room object "Building 1 - Room A"

  11. On 12/5/2022 at 10:51 AM, AlistairM said:

    I was wondering if anyone had figured out a good way to deal with multiple systems in a project yet.

    It is problematic when extracting device schedules or doing rack elevations, unless the same device in each room is given a different name.

    I feel like I must be missing a simple solution, as it's an issue that affects nearly every project!

     

    The two solutions I have are to either split into a separate file per system, or to rename all devices in each system (leaving the display tag the same). Both of these are quite cumbersome.

     

    Any ideas?

    Thanks,

    Alistair

     

    Since ConnectCad requires all devices to have unique names, in instances where I have the same system duplicated in multiple rooms, I tend to add a prefix to the device name "Room1_KVM1" "Room2_KVM2" etc. 

    As you mention you can keep your display tags the same to keep the names on the drawing from getting too long but I usually never do this as it gets to be too much work managing different device names and display tags across hundreds of devices.

  12. I'm having an issue creating viewports using the Shaded render mode. On my design layers everything looks exactly as I expect it, but when I create a viewport and render it on a sheet layer, I get a large black box covering most of the viewport.

     

    To create the viewport I'm aligning my working plane with the current view and then drawing a rectangle to use as the viewports crop. Any ideas what is causing this?

     

     

    Design Layer - 

    image.thumb.png.2d42ce607b8f31f0ef0a02526808784d.png

     

    Sheet Layer Viewport - 

    image.png.9edf0071258c91f8326175d9a12af97f.png

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