Controlling the position of a 5 way truss cube

[Mickey]

This is one of the primary reasons Braceworks makes me hate it.

There are so many things about BW that makes me scream but one thing at a time.

It has gotten better.

Now in 2023 there's a little red indicator that gives you some sense of the direction the cube is going so this is getting better.

5 way truss cubes are really common for vendors that use Tomcat or Tomcat clones which is a lot of lighting shops in the US.

I have to build dumb things out of truss all the time so fighting with this is all too frequent.

It would be tolerable if I could just flip a cube and have it be correct, but Tomcat 5 way corners aren't symmetrical, nor are they a true 12" (Why Tomcat ...?) so rotating them causes other issues.

The Braceworks tool of clicking trusses together is really useful (if only it would allow me to exchange trusses, or click trusses of a same bolt pattern but different manufacturer) but I can't get control of this 5 way cube thing.

I have a few tricks that work sometimes, but not others.

The direction of the open side is inconsistent so I can't find a regular way to trick it.

So hive mind.

How do you control the direction of a 5 way truss cube?

Attached is a a simple example of the pieces I'm using.

 

 

131880777_whyVWwhy.vwx

[jcogdell]

Hi Mickey

 

I had a play with this and I think it comes down the order you insert and attach the trusses vs the corner,

If the corner is placed first and then the truss snapped to it, the corner will stay in the desired orientation, where as if you insert the straight sections first then the corner tries to orientate based on what auto connect thinks is the correct orientation.

There is an enhancement request to provide more control over how trusses orientate when being inserted, I'll add this thread to the request.

[markdd]

Have you tried adjusting the direction of the Truss Magnets inside the Truss symbol. Currently they are all set to not allow any rotation about their connections.

 

The other way I have found to get more reliable results is to drag a truss object using the locus that is closest to the connection I want to make.

[Mickey]

So the short answer is no.

You can not control the direction of a truss cube. 😢

I figured it had something to do with the direction a truss the cube is connected to is inserted.

@markdd No I haven't and I was trying to avoid having to make custom symbols just to control the direction of the open side, but I think until this is fixed that is the only answer.

On 4/5/2023 at 1:15 AM, markdd said:

The other way I have found to get more reliable results is to drag a truss object using the locus that is closest to the connection I want to make.

Can you eleborate on this a bit more?

I'm not sure what you are talking about when you drag.

 

 

This is an example of why I hate Braceworks so much.

It kinda works sometimes.

As long as you are working the way the people that designed it to then it's golden.

For anyone else it's all sad trombone.

https://sadtrombone.com/