Put selections of Lights into Selection Groups in the Visualisation-Lights Pallete

[John Bishop]

Hi,

 

How can I put selections of Lights into Selection Groups or Parents in the Visualisation-Lights Pallet for quick selection "On the document"?

I would like to have selection groups that contain all the lights of a particular type in them and also groups of lights by Position Name or by Colour or by Gobo.

 

For example selection groups for "All Pars" or "Spotbar 1" or "L200" would be great to select "on Document" to Turn On or Turn Off those lights or to change their colour etc.

 

Is there an easy way to create these selection groups?  Perhaps even Auto-Create them as can be done in Wysiwyg?

 

I have looked but I can't for the life of me figure out how to do it.

 

Thanks,

 

John

[JBenghiat]

No, the visualization palette does not support any kind of grouping. With the "current scene" option selected, it will only show lights in visible layers and classes, so you could, for example, show only lights in an active class.

[TomWhiteLight]

In Document Settings - Spotlight Preferences, you can automatically assign the class of lighting devices based on a field of that devices data.

For Example 'Purpose'
 

Then a light with the purpose 'Wash' will assign itself to a class called 'wash', You could then use the Select Similar tool to select all objects in that class (All lights with the purpose wash).

 

The visualisation pallatte will sort by name and in the absence of name it will sort by channel number and display purpose information.

 

This workflow is some thing we are looking to improve very soon.

[John Bishop]

Thanks Tom,

 

I have my Lighting Devices assigned their Class by their Instrument Type which works very well for keeping my file well organised.

 

Swapping Classes just to turn a bunch of lights on or off would be too onerous for me.

 

I dream of the day when Vectorworks Spotlight will accept SACN (for example from ETC EOS Nomad) directly without the need to export the 3d model of the venue and scenery and the lighting rig to Vision and then all my wishes would be granted.
 

Thanks Tom.

 

John