kmoore1

quote: Originally posted by WPIKermy: I am trying to create a small visual of the proposed lighting design but I can't get the lights to actually have any light come from them. Help, anyone?? Check out chapter 8 of the SpotLight manual for an overview of the Gobo Projector and lighting tools specific to SpotLight.

quote: Originally posted by A-Greene: A designer I'm assisting created a plot with VW8.5. I only have VW9 on my laptop. When I opened the file he sent me, all the instruments were converted to 2-D symbols, not lighting symbols. All the instrument data was attached to rectangles, which were neatly arranged in a corner, which said . How do I open a VW8 file using VW9 without detaching the instrument data from the lighting symbols? Are you sure the designer is using SpotLight? Anyone who bought SpotLight 8.52 got a free upgrade to SpotLight 9. If they're using 8.52 they may not be using SpotLight but may be using the theatre lighting toolkit. You can try running the Convert from 8.5x menu command found under SpotLight's utilities menu to convert the lighting toolkit plot to a SpotLight plot. This is a one way process though so they'll have to have SpotLight to work with the instruments.

quote: Originally posted by michaelk: I've noticed that when I creat seating layouts the seats face backwards. I've worked around it by putting the focal point for the seats in the lobby and making the "Rise per row" be a negative number. Is this a bug or a fundimental misunderstanding on my part? michaelk The problem is that some of the chair symbols were drawn incorrectly. The chairs should face "south". This should have been fixed with the 9.5.1 update. You can just edit your existing chair symbols and rotate the contents around 180deg.

quote: Originally posted by lalcaraz: I am attampting to create a 2d/3d hybrid symbol that I can then use as a lighting position. Creating straight pipes are easy. I create 2 lines and sweep them to get a round pipe Is there a way to take a curved object and sweep it to make it a round pipe -- or any other way to make a curved round pipe? For a curved pipe I usually don't really need the detail of a truly round pipe so I fake it. I draw an arc or polyline to represent the 2-d version of the pipe. And usually I forget to create the 3-d so I've already converted it and have a position symbol. I edit the 2-d component of the symbol, select my polyline, duplicate it in place and then convert the duplicate to NURBS. Voila, you now have a hybrid symbol. VW will automatically take care of getting the 3-d stuff into the 3-d portion of the symbol when you're done editing. The trick is to set the lineweight of the NURBS curve to something like 20 or 40 mil that gives it the correct "weight" in renderings so it doesn't look so much like a line floating in space. This method is really quick and it makes sure that the 2-d and 3d match exactly. It's also a fairly lightweight 3-d representation so its fairly quick in renderings etc. If you need the "photo quality" detail then consider using the nurbs curve tool to draw the 3-d path and then the extrude along a path command to extrude an appropriate diameter circle along the 3-d path. Given the distance you would be viewing this at in a typical rendering situation you can probably get away with using a hexagon or octagon as the profile rather than a regular circle. This will result in fewer polygons to deal with at rendering time. HTH [ 04-19-2002: Message edited by: kmoore1 ]

quote: Originally posted by jeff: To do a 3d rendering, I drag the units on top of one another in 2d, then view in other views. It's awkward, but you get a hangable 2d plot. Rather than having to drag things back and forth you might seperate out the instruments whose 2-d location on the plan doesn't match their 3-d and place them on a seperate layer. Then place SYMBOLS, not instruments, in the correct 3-d location for your 3-d renderings. You can now turn off the layer containing the instruments that are in the wrong position and turn on the layer with the symbols that are in the correct location. SpotLight will ignore the symbols so it won't affect your exports, instrument data, counting etc. The hassle with this system is having to manage two sets of fixtures. HTH

quote: Originally posted by E&S - Shaun: When I am mirroring symbols they sometimes turn into boxes. They still carry through all their attributes but they lose all their visual information. At first I thought that it may just be a regen thing but even after exiting the program they stay the same. Also when I open drawings in 9.5.1 they open up on random layers and not the one that the document was closed in. Why? The instrument turns into a rectangle when it cannot find its assigned symbol. Check to make sure you haven't changed the name of its symbol. It is also common to have the Symbol Name field of the instrument accidentally overwritten when importing data. The instrument only updates when something happens to it like a parameter value change, moving, rotating, mirroring etc. My guess is that if you ran the refresh instruments command you would see all of the problem instruments turn into rectangles.

quote: Originally posted by tom grabowski: I noticed a small error in the Source 4 zoom ER symbols. They have a frame size in the symbol of 6.25 when the correct size is 7.5. Thanks tom. I've entered this in the bug list, it should be fixed in the next release.

quote: Originally posted by lalcaraz: Kevin Neither of these things are the case. Also, and possibly most impportantly it works everywhere else in the same drawing. Thanks Lonnie Select one of the "afflicted" instruments and scroll the object info palette all the way down to the bottom. Select the contents of the do not edit field and clear it out. The instrument will automatically re-create new values for this field. This may help to unlock your labels.

quote: Originally posted by lalcaraz: I have a plot with about 5 Label Legends and everything is working fine When I go to a few different lights with the same label legend and try to move specific info, like color and template, they do not move. <SNIP>Lonnie Okay couple of things to try. Make sure your snap grid isn't preventing the move. If it is set to 6" and you move the label 2" to the right it will snap back to where it was. The other thing to try is to change your dimension precision in the units dialog. There is a bug that I haven't been able to work out that seems to be related to this. Make sure you have at least 3 decimal places in the rounding dialog. (if you're using fractional rounding then set it to 1/8 or smaller) This may be layer scale dependant so you might try going for virtually un-rounded values and then working back. Let me know if either of these solve your problem.

quote: Originally posted by Jake White: Thanks for the info, but this did not help. <SNIP>any more ideas?<SNIP> If you want, i can send you the file... It will be much easier for me to diagnose the problem if you just send me the file. kmoore@nemetschek.net Thanks

quote: Originally posted by Jake White: On my plot, my lighting positions are on top of my instruments, and I clearly need them behind. Ive played with trying to make my instruments be solid with white backgrounds, and Ive tried bringing the instruments to the front/sending postions to the back, but to no avail. ANY ADVICE? How do i make the Lx positions fall underneath the instuments? I cant find any preferance menu that will let me change this. I need some advice desprately. Thanks... It sounds like you've placed your lighting positions and your lighting instruments on two different layers and you have the lighting position layer above the instruments layer. Open the layers dialog and select your lighting instruments layer. Use the "Move Up" button to move it up the list of layers. This controls the stacking order for display of layers. Within an individual layer the send to front and send to back will allow you to bring the instruments in front of the lighting position, or send the lighting position behind the instruments. HTH

quote: Originally posted by *Claes: Is this a completely known problem or am I missing something? I've got a lot of rendering problems with 9.01. In Open GL rendering only one layer will show. With a lot of fixtures, <SNIP>Has anyone experienced this ?! Renderworks / OpenGL only renders a single layer in the document. In order to see multiple layers in a rendered view you'll need to create a new layer and create a layer link to link the appropriate layers together into a single "Model" layer which you can then light and render. Layer linking is discussed on page 3-13 of the VW users guide. HTH

quote: Originally posted by lalcaraz: I am currently working on a lightplot using VW Spotlight 9.5 and I have about a dozen different Label Legends in the file.<SNIP>Please help! I have to get this plot out soon, it is 2 days past due. SRoss' suggestion is correct. There is a 25 label legend limit in SpotLight 9.5. In previous versions it was 12, so make sure you have 9.5 and not 9.0. Make sure you aren't using the apostrophe (') character in your legend names. This character is used to delimit strings in VectorScript and can cause the legend manager and lighting instrument to get confused. It's on the list to be fixed.

quote: Originally posted by slc193: Has anyone else had the frustration of needing to view more than one thing in 3D at a time but not being able to because they are on different layers? TIA for any suggestions/solutions. Check out layer links.(pg 3-13 of the VW Manual) I often create many individual layers to break up the ground plan, the set, hanging positions, soft goods, overhead rigging etc. I then create a "model" layer and link the appropriate layers together in this single layer. Now everything rotates together and I can light the model. I usually create a saved sheet that turns off everything but the model layer so I can quickly access the model. HTH

quote: Originally posted by jhubbell: I've placed some floor unit in section pointing towards the ceiling at a 45 degree angle with a focus oint to match but when I hit draw beams I get a error message about the angle needs to be greater than 3 degree Anyone have a solution This was a bug in a prior version of SpotLight that seems to have resurfaced. I'll look into it. The way around it right now is, unfortunately, to turn the problem upside down. A light shining down at a hanging height of 12' to an object on the floor is the same thing as a light sitting on the floor aiming at a surface 12' above the floor. If you swap the Z heights for your focus point and lighting instrument it should draw the beam and will be accurate.

quote: Originally posted by Bill Berner: Here's a good one. I'm running 9.5 Spotlight on XP Professional. Today I'm on a plane and open up the program to work, and all of the palettes that were on the external will not display.Help! Double check to make sure that you have turned off the second display. It may be that it is still "active" even though you don't have a monitor attached. If this isn't the case then you might be able to retrieve your palettes by changing to a video mode that allows something like a virtual desktop rather than spanning multiple monitors. You might be able to set the virtual screen resolution way up and then pan over to where your palettes are. One other thing to try is to edit the workspace and choose the edit a copy of the workspace option. Actually make a change to the palettes by adding or removing a tool to the palette. This should force VectorWorks to reset the pallete. You might be able to achieve the same result by renaming some or all of the palettes. If all else fails you can either:A) rebuild the workspace by hand :-(b) attach an external monitor to get your palettes visible again and then create two workspaces for yourself a dual monitor and single monitor version.c) E-mail me at the address below and I'll send you a copy of the spotlight workspace formatted for 1024x768. HTH

quote: Originally posted by Bill Berner: Yes Indeed -<Snip>The problem is, and in my opinion it's a big one is that the only thing that shows up in the find all drop down box is instruments, accessories, and positions. How 'bout it Mr. Moore. BB You are correct. This is an oversite on our part and a bug. I'll add it to the copious list of things to fix in the future. Thanks.

quote: Originally posted by Joshua Randall: I read the previous posts on editable worksheet, which partially answered my question. I have also applied the patch 1/30/2002. It seems that if the data in the first column (B) is blank, the UID from column A shows up in column B instead. I observe the problem when having "focus" as the first column. Instruments that have focus points assigned show up properly, but instruments without them have such things as "1216.1.1.0.0" in the Focus column. Not a major problem (although I am afraid at what might happen if I try to set the focus point by modifying that column). -josh This data is actually in column A which has been shrunk to hide it. The number you are seeing is the unique ID for the instrument and should not be edited. This is how SpotLight keeps track of which instrument is which going back and forth to the worksheet. If the data from column A is spilling into column b you can resize the column width of column A to fit the unique ID's. I'll check into this and make sure we get it entered on the buglist. If something is in column A it shouldn't appear in column B no matter what the column width is set to. Thanks.

quote: Originally posted by Chegs77: I am unable to select objects unless I am on the appropriate layer. My layer options are set to show/snap/modify others, as well as my class options. This is rather annoying, can someone help clarify this problem? I know of many others operating on the same platform having the same dilemna. Thanks,Catherine Hegdale Your layer views must be aligned and I believe the layers must also be at the same layer scale as the active layer. This limit is in place to help prevent unexpected editing results.

quote: Originally posted by ArenaLights: VW 9.5 PCIs there a way to get more attributes on a legend than is allowed by the label legend manager? I need to use purpose, color, unit number, circuit number, circuit name, dimmer, channel. This is too many I think. Are there settings that will allow me to use more than 6? There is currently no way to have more than six labels in a single label legend. You can create multiple label legends with subsets of the 7 labels you wish to use and switch your instruments between the legends depending on the fields you're currently working with. The limit to only 6 labels was to keep the size of the object info pallette somewhat less obscene, to preserve speed (more labels means more processing), and that it would be rare for people to need more than six labels at any one time. I'll look at this in the next version and see if we can increase the number of allowed labels with a minimum of performance impact.

quote: Originally posted by Chegs77: Using the curtain tool, I've inserted borders, and given them appropriate heights and lengths. This is all done in Top/Plan View. When I want to view things in 3D, these borders dissapear. As long as I'm in top/plan view I can see them, but any other view does not show them. I also have masking, and that is working just fine in all views. What should I do so that I can view the borders in all views?Catherine Hegdale There is a bug in the VectorWorks that prevents the curtain's 3-d geometry from drawing when it is extremely long. If you reduce your 3-d conversion resolution or change the resolution parameter for the curtain to a lower number this might get the curtain to draw. If not then draw the border as a couple of shorter sections of curtain. Sorry for the inconvienance. This is on the buglist and we hope to address the issue in the next major release of SpotLight.

quote: Originally posted by GAS_light: I am running Spotlight Version 9.5 with Windows 98 SE. I downloaded the latest patch for Spotlight 9.5 today and loaded it onto my computer. I cannot insert lighting symbols anymore. When I insert the symbol, it holds for a second, disappears and then I get the following message? Help! I need to have this plot done by next week. It sounds like you didn't get all of the components of the patch in the correct places. Open the readme file and double check to make sure you copy everything to the correct place.

quote: Originally posted by td4stage: Kevin, The channel numbers and such are in the OI pallette but are not showing up in the plot. I have a label legend applied (I think!) What else am I missing? Once you've got the data back into SpotLight, run the refresh instruments command to force the labels. to update. If your labels all disappear then you might have accidentally blanked out the "legend name" field in the transition back and forth.

quote: Originally posted by td4stage: When I export out of SL what exactly is the name of the unique ID? I am not seeing anything with that name. All I can see is "Lightwright ID"! [/b] The Unique ID is automatically exported by spotlight. You just have to make sure that you properly map this to LightWright's "External ID" field.

quote: Originally posted by lalcaraz: I am still missing something. Am I supposed to place 4 3d Locus points the size of the hole, then create them as a symbol? Then place the symbol on the wall? This is exactly correct. You will have to be in a "rendering" mode other than wireframe to see the results of the hole. If you do openGL or shaded solids or any other rendering mode you'll see the hole. quote: ] If you can send me a file that does it, so I can look at it, that would be great. I believe you have my address, I do and I will.