John McKernon

No, because "normal non-static accessories" are, to Lightwright, an instrument with it's device type set of "Device", which by definition has the data fields for channels, dimmers, color, etc. If the accessory you're inserting in VW is a color scroller, then it needs power, channel, and a color (the scroll definition). If it doesn't need any of these things, then change it's device type in the VW symbol definition to Static Accessory. And BTW, this isn't the best place to post Lightwright questions, as I don't have any way of monitoring posts - Google Alerts notified me about this one, but those can take up to a week to be noticed by Google. So if you have a direct Lightwright question, it's best to post it on my web site.

There are two kinds of "Accessories": #1 is "Accessory" and #2 is "Static Accessory". Static Accessories are things like top hats and barndoors that do not have channels or power. Accessories are devices that attach to other lights and have power and/or control channels. Be sure to use the appropriate Device Type in your symbol definitions. Also be sure that after you click to insert the accessory on the drawing and rotate it that you then click on the light that it attaches to (on my system the light symbol pre-highlights in red after I rotate the symbol if needed). That final click is what attaches both kinds of accessories to their light. Accessories will always get their own worksheet row in Lightwright. Static Accessories will appear in Lightwright's Accessory column. Also, the name of the static accessory in Lightwright will be the name of the symbol, not the name entered in the OIP or Light Info Record. This is a limitation of Vectorworks, not LW. And BTW, the current version of Lightwright is 5.0.40, you're a few years behind... - John McKernon

This definitely sounds like the lighting device-within-a-symbol problem. It's not directly related to Data Exchange, but it tends to be triggered whenever instruments are refreshed. It can happen if place a light on the plot using the instrument insertion tool, and then later select that light/lighting device and make a symbol out of it. What I wish I could remember is if SP3 for VW2011 fixes this. SP3 was released just a few days ago, if you haven't installed it yet you should do so ASAP. If SP3 doesn't fix it, the only cure is to find the symbol that has a lighting device contained within it and delete all instances of it from your drawing. Good luck! - John

The problem with using Layer colors is that Spotlight really needs for lights to be on the same layer as the Lighting Positions. If they're on separate layers, then Spotlight will search globally through all layers to find the nearest lighting position. This can be a problem when the light you place on an overhead pipe is actually closer (in x-y coordinates) to a boom on the floor - Spotlight will assign the boom to the light instead of the overhead pipe.

Saving the .xml file to a different folder won't necessarily help. If the .xml file is on any drive other than the one that the VW app is on, VW won't fill it with data. This is a known bug in VW2011.

LW 4.1.7 is fine, the import/export routines are *exactly* the same they've been for the last few releases. The problem is that 12.5.2 doesn't match fields up well when you click the "AutoLink" button when importing back into VW. You have to go through the whole list and very carefully check all of the field mappings and fix the ones that aren't right. The two most critical are the Lightwright ID and the UID. And yes, 2008 has AutoLink working correctly. Hooray! - John McKernon