Buhbuhbryan

HEY @DBLD! Could be a good use case for the Data Manger (Found by going to Tools>Data Manager). Lots of cool ways to combine data using custom functions. You could essentially mash-up the fields you are after to get reportable values needed for the Graphic Legend Criteria. I'm happy to go more in depth, but here is a basic example: Let's say you want to count up the decks that are the same size, height, and have casters. What you really need is one field in a record attached to those objects that can summarize these three pieces of info and then be used to sort them out. This can be accomplished with a custom record attached to the decks that has the following 4 fields: Deck Info Record Deck Size (Example Value: 600mmx2400mm) Height (Example Value: 900mm) Has Casters (Example Value: TRUE) Summary (Example Value: 600mmx2400mm , 900mm, TRUE) The first 3 fields are easy and can either be entered manually in the case of symbols with records attached or pulled from the Stage Deck parameters using some basic functions. The 4th field is where the Data Manager really comes into play and allows you to use a custom formula to automatically combine the other 3 fields. That formula would look something like: =CONCAT('Deck Info' . 'Deck Size' , 'Deck Info' . 'Height' , 'Deck Info' . 'Has Casters') in the example above this would populate the value "600mmx2400mm , 900mm, TRUE" into the Summary Field. So once we've finished nerding it up we are actually left with a super cool automated system for sorting out stage decks! All we have to do now is change the Graphic Legend's "Define Custom Source" settings to Report By: the Summary field of the Deck Info record. From now on in the Graphic Legend, only decks that have the same size, height, and casters will be counted together because those objects will have identical Summary fields. I don't know how much of this is new information. But if its something you are interested in setting up, please let me know and I'd be happy to throw together a mockup. Cheers!

After re-publishing documents countless times because I forgot to do something in Spotlight, I have decided to embark on the journey of creating a "catch-all" publish script for VWX Spotlight, and I want to call it Super Publish. Spoiler alert, writing scripts is not my jam and I didn't make it very far. Below I've outlined exactly what I'm trying to get this script to do and I think lots of people would enjoy it: 1. Recalculate all Worksheets in the Document 2. Update All Schematic View Objects 3. Refresh All Lighting Devices 3. Renumber All Sheets based on Stacking Order / Page Number 4. Save 5. Publish NOTES: - I know that the Publish Command already has an option to recalculate all Worksheets. But I would like to see the worksheet update prior to waiting for the publish to finish as this is where I can often find errors in the document. Ideally I can have my Key Worksheet visible in the background -> start the Super Publish Script -> have the Key Worksheet Update and Refresh -> then receive a prompt to choose to continue with steps 2 thru 5. (Yes yes, I could just refresh the WS before starting Super Publish, but where is the fun in that?) - As for renumbering sheet layers, it looks like @michaelk has the best solution out there but it has more control than I need and I always have to run it twice. We aren't using pre-fixes, blocked numbers, or anything of that sort. I just want to straight-up start at 1 and re-number sheets sequentially based on stacking order. I think this can be achieved without any user input just by re-configuring @michaelk's script to run twice with set values. The first pass would use some obscure prefix like "z" start at a value of "1" and end at a value of "200". The second pass would then start, have no value for the prefix, a start at a value of "1" and end at a value of "200". It's clunky, but this is what I have to do anyways and I'm sure a script could do it faster than I could. - In my mind Super Publish works just fine as a "fire-and-forget" menu command. But if any of you geniuses have sorted out the madness of creating functional dialogues I picture Super Publish could also work well as a Dialogue where each step is a checkbox and users can decide which components to use. Below is how far I've made it writing the script. It doesn't give me an error message, so I assume it's working for the most part. Notably not present is anything to do with showing the refreshed WS or Renumbering Sheets. PROCEDURE SuperPublish; VAR i, n : INTEGER; objName : STRING; foundObject : HANDLE; OK : BOOLEAN; FUNCTION DoIt (h : HANDLE) : BOOLEAN; BEGIN RECALCULATEWS(h); RESETOBJECT(h); { these two lines } RESETOBJECT(GETWSIMAGE(h)); { are the key part! } END; BEGIN n := NAMENUM; FOR i := 1 TO n DO BEGIN foundObject := GETOBJECT(NAMELIST(i)); IF GETTYPE(foundObject) = 18 THEN ok := DoIt(foundObject); END; DoMenuTextByName('Update All Schematic Views',0) ; DoMenuTextByName('Save',0) ; DoMenuTextByName('Publish',0) ; END; RUN(SuperPublish); To anybody who made it this far, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk! It was the forums that helped me get to this point and any help is greatly appreciated! Hopefully the end result will be a great help to my fellow Spotlight Users!

Hi! @klinzey Could having Label Legends accept Data Viz applied to Lighting Devices be a toggled preference in Spotlight Preferences instead of being locked? I'm currently developing a workflow for only displaying lighting devices available to be used by support acts. I'm already using classes to organize my lighting devices for other purposes, so the next level of visibility control is using Data Viz. Basically, I only want to display Lighting Devices that have a record field value of TRUE for "Used by Support Act" and Lighting Devices that have a record field value of FALSE for "Used by Support Act" should be invisible (Pen and Fill set to None). This Data Viz works perfectly for everything in the document except Label Legends. The lights disappear, but the legends linger. As a Plan B, I explored using the "Draw All Other Objects Grayed" option for Data Viz and only applied changes to Lighting Devices that have a record field value of TRUE for "Used by Support Act". This yielded a similarly frustrating result. All Label Legends were grayed out instead of just the label legends associated with the fixtures I want to have grayed out. As a Plan C, I tried using records attached to various label legends, still no luck. I totally see why Data Viz shouldn't alter label legends by default, but I can think of several use cases similar to this where it would be nice to have some more control. Thanks for the help!

Hey @Jamie O Brien, totally possible! You'll just need to set the Tilt Value to "-90" in the Object Info Palette and you're all set

Just gonna leave this here as it will help you get started with multiple emitters: https://university.vectorworks.net/mod/page/view.php?id=1180 Also sending out a file with some good ol functioning cyc lights in case anyone wants it 1790076044_MultipleEmittersFINISHv2023.vwx Old Cyc Lights.vwx