markdd

What's MMB!? EDIT: Ah! Middle Mouse button Thanks

Take a look at this worksheet Worksheet.vwx

You are counting symbols and not lighting devices. Change the B column to Lighting Device Instrument Types and then the string in Column D will have the correct item to look at.

The only other thing I can think of is that you have a symbol with some rogue geometry in one of the the design layers. I have seen this before and that was one of the causes.

Could it be that you have some stray geometry like a locus in the Annotations portion of the viewport. This can happen, even if the object 's class is turned off.

The Structural member tool, like a lot of other plug-in tools creates the 2D geometry on-the-fly as the underlying 3D geometry is manipulated - rather like the Auto Hybrid object. When you add your own 2D component, this functionality is lost and the Structural Member object becomes like any standard 2D/3D hybrid symbol in that It will not rotate around the X and Y axes. This is a quirk, limitation, call it what you will of Vectorworks. It actually makes complete sense to me and I have learned to work with it and it doesn't bother me now. Hope that helps.

The rotate tool automatically reverts to this when a lighting device is selected in a 3D view. (Also, screen plane must not be the active plane). It's been around since 2019 (I think) The tool will rotate the 3D portion of the lighting device about the X,Y,Z axes in a 3D view. It's fantastically useful for orientating lighting devices on non-horizontal lighting positions.

2 ways that I know Use the Custom Modification command in the Tools menu and make a script. These settings will make a script that selects all lighting devices that have their beams turned on. When you run the script a Multiple Object Properties dialogue will open and you can just toggle them all off in one go. The other method is to use the Autoplot plug-in which has script that will do that for you in a couple of clicks less.

Try this. Its a webinar I did for Vectorworks last month.

The best way I have found to achieve your first question is to put the whole construction inside an Auto hybrid wrapper. This will generate 2d Top/Plan geometry as you create and edit the structure. However, because the Structural member object already creates 2D geometry, you will need to ungroup the structural members so that just the 3D geometry is left behind. The only problem with doing this is that all the parametric functionality of the Structural member object will be lost. (come back if you need any help with this...) The one limitation to adding 2d components to any 3D plugin or 3D only symbol is that you are not able to rotate the object around the X or Y axes. (3D rotate).

You should have a maximum of 4 objects inside the 3D portion of the symbol A Body A Base A Yoke a 3D locus for light to emit from and to create the tilt axis. These items can however be groups. this means that you can put as much geometry as you like into each group. Each of the Groups or single objects needs a parts record attached to it with one of the items checked. If you have more than three items (plus a 3D locus) then you have too many and need to look at deleting something. I hope that helps

It looks like the Symbol you are using in the lighting device does not have the parts records set up correctly. Come back if you need more help with this and I will try and point you in the right direction.

This is intentional and is created when a truss object is hung on a non horizontal configuration. All 2D or 2D/3D Hybrid symbols will not rotate around the X and Y axes so this is an automatic workaround by the tool to enable Truss Objects to hang at any angle.

I think the rationale is about connections and braceworks. I think if the Replace Truss command could be better implemented then it would be more useful for that moment when you know you need to swap out like for like.....

You should investigate the Replace Truss command. You may need to add it to your workspace though.