kevin.hayward

Yes. It works. I can get things done. I get paid to draw things, not faff around waiting for software to decide whether or not it's going to do what I want.

And...? How do revert to SP3.1, exactly? I have the update file on my HDD. What next?

Nope. Using the UK version and am having the same problems. Updated to sp4 and... I've spent the lest two hours trying to get some work done. Opening a file takes ages and I have to do that from Explorer, the VW UI is completely unresponsive. VW crashed part way through updating the library, after half an hour trying to download it. I'm using Windows 11 Pro, 3kHz Intel i9, RTX 4080 and VW worked adequately yesterday*. *for VW values of "adequately"

bad cables.vwxI stripped out all the identifying info.

Unfortunately I can't share the file because the client... although, to be honest, it's somewhat moot as this is an issue I see frequently (if you can call what seems to be a 50% probability "frequent"). I created these cables with the cable tool.

This is the top view of a lighting plan. It looks good, yes. This is the plan view. Why are the red cables going wrong like that? Editing the cable path shows the simple track (distro to cable path, to cable bridge, to truss, to stage box), so it's not like I can fix this.

I'd like to suggest two-stage locking for all objects. Lock position (as viewports) Lock contents (for want of a better phrase) Sometimes you want to fix an object in place, while being able to edit it in some way; e.g. truss, site, walls etc. If I have a truss locked in place, I'll still want to run cables on it, attach lights, distros etc, but I don't want to accidentally move it. I'll want to keep the site plan locked to geo location, but cut into it, walls will be fixed but I'll want to add doors, etc. Sometimes you'll want to lock something so it can't be changed, but be able to move it without risking dragging something out of position.

Of course. "End of day" commits would be the absolute minimum. That said, what is your reasoning for using the same working file throughout a project? We're still in flux about the process, but we've been opening from project file every morning and overwriting the working file, on the theory there should be no uncommitted changes.

According to this page: But I've also heard that it's best to treat working files as disposable and regularly re-start by opening from the project file. I would have though it best to make sure to commit at the end of the day anyway. At that point, there ought to be no difference, but I imagine it would be better than risk people working on 'old' drawings, unless you ensure everybody regularly updates/reverts the file.

I have a very tight venue. I've got 300mm square truss tight to structural cross members. I am told we're going to use "gacflex point and shackle" around both structure and truss. How do I model this in VW 2023? It's essentially a spanset wrapped around structure to create a dead hang, then spanset around the truss attached to the dead hang. Any pointers would be GREATLY appreciated. truss test.vwx

I've got a fairly complex sports venue; 14 floor distros, 62 small distros on truss, 262 lights. That's a lot of cables. To facilitate cable naming, I have a worksheet with cable start, end, and cable name which I can enter more easily. The problem is, every time I open the drawing (or save) I get error messages that thing is already connected to other thing and do I want to delete stuff, which I have. But I kept finding duplicate connections in my worksheet. So, at my wits' end, I 'magic wand'-ed all the cables and deleted them. It's a pain in the butt to redraw so many cables but at least I ought to have a clean drawing, yes? Heck no. Even after recalculating the worksheet, there are still over fifty entries in the worksheet. If I right click on the entry and 'selct item', the OIP remains empty, there's nothing selected. Del key does nothing (in the sense that after recalculating the worksheet, the spurious entries remain), Edit>Clear does nothing, deleting the worksheet and recreating it does nothing as the new worksheet has those spurious entries, purging does nothing. Surely, if I delete a cable (which I find I have to do as cables are one of VW's many 'fire and forget' drawing objects; ie forget about editing cables, it's way easier to start from scratch) there should be no remaining info about said cable in the drawing. So, how do I ensure that deleted cables leave no orphan data in a drawing? How do I get rid of the orphan data that's there now?

IN Spotlight 2023 if I (for example) click on a cable, to check what components are used, select Cable Configuration, and then click Cancel VW recalculates the cable. Why? Cancel means "make no changes". It means leave things as they were, forget anything I've done, discard any changes, go back to how things were BEFORE. I'd really like VW to work like every other piece of software on the planet. If I click Cancel on a dialog, the program should instantly go back to where I was BEFORE I opened the dialog and not force me to wait while it recalculates something that does NOT need recalculating.

The problem with this is it takes time, and when I find and select the [x] connection, it triggers an On Click event in the OIP which means VW recalculates the cable. This takes more time AND then forces a redraw of the OIP. So I now have to scroll down through the OIP until I find the connections. I want to click on a light/distro/whatever and quickly see what's connected to what.

Well... it was definitely on the "Would be nice" list. And it's a VWXP referencing other VWXP files. Why risk mucking things up, when you can risk royally mucking things up? 😁

It's all Vectorworks elements, no AutoCAD dwgs, but it is a series of VWXP files. Because, as I said, reasons... I can just create a 'dummy' stage box to connect the distros to the truss. All the truss specific distros/cabling is in the referenced file.