Scott C. Parker

This is normal. VW is not supposed to interact with inactive layers. When I'm working with specific items from a crowded layer that I need to interact with, I'll move them to my current layer, do my work, and then move them back.

There's a workaround that works if you're converting your truss system into hanging positions. Only with straight runs though. Anything on an angle will skew the results. Make two data tags, one for horizontal and one for vertical. Add the Bounding Box attributes to each. It'll measure the outside of the hanging position and report the size.

The key was never designed to show items not shown in the drawing. The key only looks at items included in the drawing and displays what it finds. To report on your inventory stock, you need to open the file from which the inventories were created and build reports. Using the symbols in the key is still not an option. It likely won't be for the remainder of the 2024 cycle, and it's doubtful it'll be in the first rounds of 2025, either. We have added a new reporting function in 2025 that will report quantities of gear and show the remaining available gear in used inventories. Placing this report along side the key will be very helpful.

Can you pinpoint which step you're following in which video? Can you provide a timestamp so we can see the steps you're replicating? Since inserting items can be affected by many settings, it's a guessing game when viewing a test file.

Please post a sample file. For this one, please copy/paste the truss, pipes, and truss cross shown in the screenshot into a new file for testing. Thanks.

@Martin Benesh I saw your post on the FB group and someone gave some other suggestions. Did you have luck? I'm curious on your final solutions.

Your image looks like a curved arc. Would you please post a copy of the file and a simple pencil sketch of what you're trying to create?

In addition to @TomWhiteLight's suggestion. You can play with the Clip Cube and combine it with viewports to isolate some of your items.

PS, you can do the same with data tags. We have one called "Data Tag-Breakout" that does what you want.

Each light has a "circuit name" (fanout name) and a "circuit number" (leg#) field. A worksheet will work based on using these two fields plus any other fields you need. The ones you list as spares won't say "spare" as they'll be empty.

Since the accessories are coded to land on top of lighting symbols, the only suggestion I have right now is to duplicate them and make your own versions, cutting out the 2D parts. We'll give it some thought, but it would be a while before anything happens since editing the symbols is a valid alternative.

Please post a sample file so we can play with it.

Hi @Martin Benesh it turns out that 2D geometry of accessories is hard coded to sit on top of the 2D geometry of lighting devices. This video shows a workaround of editing the 2D geometry of the stand so it looks as if it is sitting under the head of the light ng unit. I've also included the file. Accessory Sample for Forum .vwx AccessoryUnderLight.mp4

Can you post an example file so we can see what you're doing and play with the tag?

@Martin Benesh Can you post an example file with a couple of fixtures and accessories to play with? A quick sketch of what you're looking to do would be helpful as well.

Have you tried changing the zoom tool's mode to interactive? What happens? I haven't tried it with a stylus.

Hello @Cristiano Alves It's possible @JustinVH is waiting to receive some sample files for testing. He mentioned needing files in his last reply in this thread. Do you have files you can share?

Here's how to replace the hook. I didn't try changing the hook symbol name after I edited it. let me know if changing the name will still associate the hook with a different hoist. If it doesn't, I'll inquire further. ReplaceHook.mp4

Hi Peter, I was intrigued by this and played around for a while. Apparently, truss crosses can only have one location where the truss meets in Vectorworks 2024. When I changed the tool to insert a drop instead of a truss cross, it worked once I had a proper offset. I had to change the minimum length for the down leg in the bridle preferences to one mm before using the tool. Here's a video I made to explain the process to our programmers. You can skip to after 2:30 to see success. insertdropparalelltruss.mp4 I'm submitting a request to allow multiple trust crosses so that the lower truss does not need to shift down at all. However, we would expect it to shift to account for the spacing of the coupling device.

Hi Peter, Yes, my truss were directly from the VW libraries. I confess I didn't seek out the same truss you used from our library during testing. The truss in the drawing you shared has had some custom changes made and I didn't want to mess with them. All truss in the VW library *should* be able to have some braceworks calculations applied. When we have the structural info from manufacturers, we get more info about flexibility. When we don't, we treat them as static systems. Hence the Grey and Green results. I'm not sure what you're asking here. I made frames, and they worked.

In this example, the strip light is aligned to the left and all others are centered. If the strip were assigned to be centered with the others, it would knock all the others far away from the left border box .

@tbexon, Widen the Spotlight Equip Summary Key dialog and use the Alignment column. Let me know if you have issues.

Update 4.1 is out and offers the centering you're looking for. Once you update to the latest release, please test again and let us know how things go. You may need to update and/or rebuild your summary keys. We fixed an issue with them between updates 3 & 4.

@Peter Telleman I don't have a direct answer other than it's something to do with the modified truss symbols you're using. I played for a while trying to figure out what but I failed. To confirm the calculations would work outright, I built two similar frames using Tomcat and Christie truss. They both calculated as expected. Here's the file I played with. Your custom symbols might not match anymore as I was making edits. Tomcat is grey as we don't have the structural info. The Christie frame is green as we do have the structural info. vertical trussframe.vwx