kmoore1 Posted October 19, 2001 Share Posted October 19, 2001 quote: Originally posted by jtallen: I don't understand what you are saying. I follow the manual instructions on replacing instruments exactly and it doesn't work. Can you spell out what exactly I should be doing to solve this problem. Can you please send me one of your 8.5 files. I'll take a look at it and try to figure out why you're having this problem. kmoore@nemetschek.net ------------------ -- Kevin Moore --------------------- Product Manager VectorWorks SpotLight --------------------- Quote Link to comment
Jim_Allen Posted October 19, 2001 Author Share Posted October 19, 2001 It seems that whenever I replace units, on a plot that has been converted from 8.5, with ETC units they come in with nothing in the "Instrument type" field. Any thoughts? Quote Link to comment
kmoore1 Posted October 19, 2001 Share Posted October 19, 2001 quote: Originally posted by jtallen: It seems that whenever I replace units, on a plot that has been converted from 8.5, with ETC units they come in with nothing in the "Instrument type" field. Any thoughts? Converted from SpotLight 8.5 or Theatre lighting toolkit in 8.5? Are you replacing it with ETC instrumentation from SpotLight 9.01? Our instruments all have a record format called "Light Info Record" attached to them and this record holds the various defaults for an instrument. Check to make sure that the instrument type field is filled out in your source 4 symbols and that there isn't another record format attached with the same field name. ------------------ -- Kevin Moore --------------------- Product Manager VectorWorks SpotLight --------------------- Quote Link to comment
Jim_Allen Posted October 19, 2001 Author Share Posted October 19, 2001 I select the instruments to be replaced. Go to "replace instruments" menu. Select ETC in the Symbol Folder window - select a S4-36 unit in the symbol window and click OK. I get units with all the info in the Object Properties window - position, color, channel, etc, except the instrument type which is blank. Again this only occurs with ETC units. Quote Link to comment
kmoore1 Posted October 19, 2001 Share Posted October 19, 2001 quote: Originally posted by jtallen: I select the instruments to be replaced. Go to "replace instruments" menu. Select ETC in the Symbol Folder window - select a S4-36 unit in the symbol window and click OK. I get units with all the info in the Object Properties window - position, color, channel, etc, except the instrument type which is blank. Again this only occurs with ETC units. Check the second part of my last post on the bulletin board about checking out the symbol and what information is attached to it. Find your "S4-36" instrument in the resources of you file and edit it. The most probable cause of it not updating is that the field names in the record attached to this symbol do not match the field names of SpotLight's lighting device. You can edit the record format and change the names to match and this will fix the problem. You might also pull in the source 4 symbols included with SpotLight and use those instead. They will have the correct records and fields attached. ------------------ -- Kevin Moore --------------------- Product Manager VectorWorks SpotLight --------------------- Quote Link to comment
kmoore1 Posted October 19, 2001 Share Posted October 19, 2001 quote: Originally posted by kmoore1: Can you please send me one of your 8.5 files. I'll take a look at it and try to figure out why you're having this problem. Ok. The reason you're having problems is that your Light Info record didn't get changed to the new format used by spotlight 8.52 and 9.01. The command convert plot from 8.5x should have done this. I don't know if it didn't get run, or if it has a bug and didn't update the record format. I'll check into this. The symbols that are in your document seem to mostly be from the VW 8.52 theatre lighting toolkit. Here is how to fix it. In the resources palette scroll down to the item "Light Info Record" Click the "Edit..." button to edit the record format. Change the field name of "Instrument Type" to "Inst Type" Change "T3-Frame Size" to "Frame Size" Click OK to finish editing the record format. Now any time you perform a replace instrument it will work correctly. You might want to start your next project from a clean file and use the SpotLight 9.01 instrument symbols. This should greatly reduce your file sizes as you won't have the complete theatre lighting toolkit stuff floating around with your file each time. I knocked your hilton file down from 5791k to 1692k by purging the un-used symbols out of the document. Just be sure to insert instances of your legend symbols into a temp layer to keep them from disappearing. ------------------ -- Kevin Moore --------------------- Product Manager VectorWorks SpotLight --------------------- Quote Link to comment
Jim_Allen Posted October 20, 2001 Author Share Posted October 20, 2001 Kevin, Thanks for the help. I did run the convert from 8.5 so I guess there is a bug in the convert. It is really a hassle to start new, as I re-use old plots when I am going back into a space, or one that is close to a space I have been in before - instrument wise. I will start creating new plots, but I hope future upgrades( 9.5 ) won't create this problem. I have plots for 50 theatres (30 in 8.5) and I won't want to start from scratch everytime SP upgrades. Also how did you purge the old instruments, as I have a bunch of converted plots that sit around 5 Mgs and would love to downsize them!! Quote Link to comment
kmoore1 Posted October 20, 2001 Share Posted October 20, 2001 quote: Originally posted by jtallen: Kevin, Thanks for the help. I did run the convert from 8.5 so I guess there is a bug in the convert. I'll check into this and get it on the buglist. quote: It is really a hassle to start new, as I re-use old plots when I am going back into a space, or one that is close to a space I have been in before - instrument wise. I will start creating new plots, but I hope future upgrades( 9.5 ) won't create this problem. I have plots for 50 theatres (30 in 8.5) and I won't want to start from scratch everytime SP upgrades. Also how did you purge the old instruments, as I have a bunch of converted plots that sit around 5 Mgs and would love to downsize them!! You can run the purge command which is on the edit menu. You'll need to insert instances of your label legend symbols to prevent them from being purged. I would also recommend that you attach the zsys record to one of these instances. When I cleaned up your hilton file I just created a new layer and made it invisible. Inserted each of the legends into this layer and then selected one of them, changed to the data pane of the object info palette and selected the check box for the zsys record. I then ran the purge command and choose all of the check boxes. Once it was done I manually pruned out all of the unused symbol folders and the resulting file was much smaller. The theatre lighting toolkit stationery file is where all of the bloat is coming from. The entire library of symbols was included in the template and was over a meg and half. SpotLight has so many more symbols that they were all broken out into library files instead of a single template file. SpotLight was also designed not to require any sort of template file as this proved to be really cumbersome for people working from DXF imports or previous plots or things they were getting from scenic designers in VW. You should be good from now going forward. I would recommend setting up a clean template file with your usual layer structure and a library of your common lighting equipment, label legends, etc and then just copy and paste your exisiting projects, layer by layer, into this clean template. You shouldn't have to re-draft anything, just some copying and pasting and resource maintenance. HTH ------------------ -- Kevin Moore --------------------- Product Manager VectorWorks SpotLight --------------------- Quote Link to comment
Jim_Allen Posted October 20, 2001 Author Share Posted October 20, 2001 Kacey, I don't understand what you are saying. I follow the manual instructions on replacing instruments exactly and it doesn't work. I still get ETC instruments with no instrument type in the record. I just updated another plot from 8.5 to 9.0 and everytime I do an instrument replacement NONE of the units have the correct instrument type. ETC units are blank and the rest have the same unit type of the unit before I replced it. IE change a 6x9 to 6x12 and the record still says 6x9 even though the icon is now a 6x12 All the symbols I am using are SP symbols that came with the program. Can you spell out what exactly I should be doing to solve this problem. Thanks Jim Quote Link to comment
Jim_Allen Posted November 2, 2001 Author Share Posted November 2, 2001 Kevin, Thanks. I tried it on aplot and reduced it to 2.98mgs, about 1/2 the prginal. I also went into the record file for the plot and deleted floders of instruments not being used, as you said to do. Everything seems to be ok. One thing I tried was to go back to the VW spotlight record and wanted to add an instrument that was not on the plot orginally, a Varilits VL7B. when i went to insert it onto the plot I get - Arecord format named"Light info Record" already exsists in current document. Do you want to replace it, rename the one being imported, or use the exsisting one? I tried replace and it seemd to work but I was wondering what this was all about. Jim Quote Link to comment
Jim_Allen Posted November 2, 2001 Author Share Posted November 2, 2001 I have done a couple more plots. All of my label legends are gone after the purge, even if I assign them to the instruments I place before the purge??? I am having to go back and re-create the legend over again and re-assign them to the instruments - any thoughts? Quote Link to comment
Jim_Allen Posted November 7, 2001 Author Share Posted November 7, 2001 Sorry I didn't understand it correctly. I thought if I assigned an instrument to the legend it would not be purged. I got it figured out now Thanks. Quote Link to comment
kmoore1 Posted November 8, 2001 Share Posted November 8, 2001 quote: Originally posted by jtallen: I have done a couple more plots. All of my label legends are gone after the purge, even if I assign them to the instruments I place before the purge??? I am having to go back and re-create the legend over again and re-assign them to the instruments - any thoughts? Your label legends are gone because they weren't inserted anywhere in the document. I mentioned this specifically in my post as a warning. The label legends are used by the lighting instrument to look up information. I'll e-mail you a file of the label legends that were in the file I purged. Before you purge you need to use the symbol tool to insert each of your label legends somewhere in the document. This will add virtually no size to your file and will keep the legend symbols from being purged. Quote Link to comment
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