klinzey

First upgrade to the current version of 12 at a minimum. 12.5.2? If that still does not help try installing the version of QuickTime that came on the original install disk. At this point 12 is a rather old version and just may not run on your current system so please post your system configuration including the OS version.

Susan, You should talk to your distributor directly about your watermarked files when you upgrading to a professional license. The placement of the watermark/banner should not have changed for 2011. FYI: There was a lot of work done in 2011 for watermarks. VW2011 has to option to display the watermark (or banner) in the drawing so you can check the placement before you print. The warning dialogs when you import or open an educational resource/document are more prominent. The Title Bar at the top of the VW window will also indicate if you are using an educational version and/or if you are using a watermarked file even in a professional version.

The skirt height is automatically set the the height of the floor. (Layer Z height) If you set the Z height of the object the skirt will grow to reach the floor. If you need to offset the screen from the Layer height then use the Floor Height parameter.

It you were not given the option of a circle it may have been because an object named "Circle" already existed in the document. The shapes are just symbols in the Containers folder. The choices in the dialg are build from the symbols in theis folder. The lables moving on top of one another is a bug from using older label legends. If you create a new label legend from scratch you should not have the problem.

You can use custom Renderworks or Final Quality Renderworks. Renderworks with shadows will work in some cases but not in all.

OK. Just making sure you are not using the old "Gobo Projector" object. The one step you are missing if focusing the light. Select the light and run the "Focus instruments..." commnad. Select "Next Click" and OK. You will be prompted to give it a Name, a height and to click in the document. Other than that make sure you are using one of the fixtures that came with Spotlight so it will have the correct texture and beam angle settings. Make sure you lighting device has a Z hight and the light is on.

Which version are you using? The "Gobo Projector" has not been part of Spotlight for several versions.

Now that 2011 is released you can get the x,y, and z locations into a worksheet. XCoordinate, YCoordinate, and ZCoordinate will return the insertion point of symbols and object in a worksheet.

This is for a slightly older version but most of the basics still apply. http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/thetr263/index.html

You should see the instrument highlight in red when you hover over a lighting device.

'light info record M' is only used for metric documents and it only uses those two fields.

Spotlight only recognizes the 2 light info records. At one time we allowed any record but we found that data was being accidentally overwritten by the other records(most commonly the Auto Plot Record) so we were forced limit it to just the two records in order to preserve the user data.

James, You should be able to add your own custom fields to the light info record. If for some reasons your names do not work you may need to use User 1 etc, but I think the alternative names will work. The one thing you will need to do is change the record on ALL the lights you will be using, otherwise you will get the Replace Record warning dialog when ever you use a light with a different record.

Exporting only visible layers was considered but we decided against it since layer visibility is only a temporary state of the drawing. If you changed layer visibility the layers not currently visible would be deleted from LW and then when you made the layers in VW visible again the lights would be seen as NEW in LW. This would happen every time you changed layer visibility in VW. If you added lights in LW on a layer that was not visible at the time what would VW do with the lights? The more we looked at it the more potential problems we found.

Yes, And the controls for the image will be disabled and/or not shown if you don'r have Renderworks installed.

Sam, Also if you need to use the image often, say like your company logo, you can place a VW file containing the image in your user folder \Users\\AppData\Roaming\Nemetschek\Vectorworks\2010\Libraries\Defaults\Video Screen\Screen Images\ (or the equivalent path on the Mac.)

Jane, The Label Legend is probably from an older version of VW. If you make a new one from scratch it should fix your peoblem. Kevin

Creating a screen with multiple projectors can be done easily using the Blended screen in the Spotlight Tool Set. In a new blank file, place and configure the blended screen and then click Insert Projectors. This will create the screen with multiple projectors. Getting the screen into the "Create Screen" in simple but takes a few more steps but you only have to do this once. The "Create Screen" command accesses symbols from the default content library. WV ships just a small representative set. To allow "Create Screen" to access a custom screen you must create a symbol. Select the Video Screen and Projectors and choose Modify/Create Symbol. In the dialog give the symbol a name and check the option "Convert to Group". You can modify the other options as you like. Click OK to exit the dialog. Repeat the process for any other video screens you want to appear in the "Create Screen" command. Save the file. Close VW and move the file to your user folder ...\Libraries\Defaults\Event Planning\Screen\ Launch VW and when you run "Create Screen" you will see the new choices listed in the dialog. The "Blended Screen", objects will be inserted as a group which can be ungrouped to access the individual objects. Kevin

Rob, You want to change the scale before you make them into symbols. First thing to do is to try to get the right scale when you import the symbols. Is sometimes easier to import the file a few times then to scale all the geometry. When you import the file try manually setting the units. VW will try to determine them automatically but sometimes the info is not in the imported file. Usually 1 unit = 1 mm or 1 unit = 1" Once you get one right all the other files from that manufacturer will probably use the same unit factor. Kevin

Lightwright does not support separate Universe and Dimmer fields. You must just exchange the dimmer number and setup the universe assignments in the Spotlight Preferences. Then Spotlight will calculate the Universe and U Dimmers.

In LW use Utilities\Limits As a example if the Layer you want to hide is "FOH Positions" then you would set Match "All Kinds" "x" and also when "VW Layer" "is not" "FOH Positions" You can add mutiple conditions to hide mutiple layers. The same limit can be applied when printing paperwork. Data changes will still be transfered and visable as soon as you remove the limit.

You can't stop them from exporting but LW knows about the layers and you can filter them out of LW.

It all depends on how the plot was created. First make sure there isn't already 3D geometry. All the fixtures that ship with Spotlight contain 2D and 3D. If your plot is really a 2D only Spotlight plot then you first need to replace all your 2D symbols with 3D hybrid symbols and do the same thing with your lighting positions. Once that's complete give the lighting positions and fixtures a real 3D height. If you have other geometry that's 2D only you will probably be able to simply extrude the 2D to convert it to 3D.

Jeff, The user folder would be somewere in a path similiar to this: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Nemetschek\Vectorworks\2010 You can just either rename or move the "2010" folder as a test.

Use the Assign Legend To Insts command to reassign the Label Legend to the instrument.