Company Call BV Posted April 21 Share Posted April 21 Hi All With Excel referencing Vectorworks made a big step in my opinion. With that being done is it possible to import for example a CSV / Excel with patch data and link those columns to Lighting Device info? Cheers Quote Link to comment
spettitt Posted April 21 Share Posted April 21 Unsure on that, but I would be interested to know as well. I would think GDTF modes would be complicated to validate, which then influences the footprint parameter as well. Channels and Addresses would probably be more straightforward. 1 Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee jcogdell Posted April 22 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted April 22 The issue here is how to ensure that the correct data in the excel sheet is linked to the correct lighting device. We do support exporting and importing csv files with lighting data but this relies on using the hidden unique identifier (uid) for each lighting device instance in the design. Without this Spotlight doesn't know which lighting device is which. In practice this means that the original csv data has to be created in Spotlight so that the correct uid data is included. Where is the patch data coming from? There maybe a possible workaround or solution available. Quote Link to comment
JBenghiat Posted April 22 Share Posted April 22 I did some experimenting with this a few weeks ago, and there's no easy solution. If you have Lightwright, you can merge in CSV data, keying by channel, and then sync that data with Spotlight. LW handled a patch csv from Eos as expected, without any file cleaning. 2 Quote Link to comment
Company Call BV Posted April 24 Author Share Posted April 24 On 4/22/2024 at 4:44 PM, jcogdell said: The issue here is how to ensure that the correct data in the excel sheet is linked to the correct lighting device. We do support exporting and importing csv files with lighting data but this relies on using the hidden unique identifier (uid) for each lighting device instance in the design. Without this Spotlight doesn't know which lighting device is which. In practice this means that the original csv data has to be created in Spotlight so that the correct uid data is included. Where is the patch data coming from? There maybe a possible workaround or solution available. I do understand the issue regarding the correct data, but in the case of Spotlight you always add the Channel number / Unit number to your fixture. That would be the unique identifier for Vectorworks to match to. I create my patch in another software then Vectorworks as some of the modes are not correct or there is no GDTF fixture available etc. Atm I have to manual insert the patch in Vectorworks which can result in errors, with the new Excel referencing I was hoping to find a way to import a CSV / Excel and link it to an Lighting Device. Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee jcogdell Posted April 24 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted April 24 13 minutes ago, Company Call BV said: the Channel number / Unit number to your fixture. That would be the unique identifier for Vectorworks to match to. The problem is that Spotlight doesn't use the channel number as the internal identifier since it can change based on design and user requirements, which would then break any connection (internal to Spotlight or external) to the any other linked data. You can try using the worksheet criteria ='Lighting Device'.'UID' to access the UUID's and this may enable you to correctly map the data. What software are you using to create the patch? If it supports MVR this may provide another route to get the data in and sync it to the correct lights. Quote Link to comment
Sam Jones Posted April 24 Share Posted April 24 10 hours ago, Company Call BV said: I do understand the issue regarding the correct data, but in the case of Spotlight you always add the Channel number / Unit number to your fixture. That would be the unique identifier for Vectorworks to match to. Not really. 10 years ago I put 4 lights on separate circuits, 3 of which had the same unit number but different positions, on the same channel to make a path. Happens rarely, but does happen. Position and Unit Number would be unique, and would have the additional advantage of telling you where the fixture is. That doesn't matter with this problem, but the use of channel numbers to identify fixtures drives me crazy. Where the #$@&! is channel 203? It's not coming on, and the programmer wants me to troubleshoot it. 1 Quote Link to comment
Jesse Cogswell Posted 15 hours ago Share Posted 15 hours ago I wrote a script that can link a worksheet (including a referenced Excel document) to a record format, as detailed in this post: I have since added a feature to allow the user to select the record behind parametric objects such as Lighting Devices, download link can be found here: @Company Call BV Here's why this is relevant to you: you should be able to use this command to link an imported worksheet with patch data to the Lighting Device record to patch your fixtures. I ran a quick test by exporting a .csv from an Eos show file and used it to patch some fixtures. The key here is that the top row of the worksheet must be column headers and must match the parameters of the Lighting Device object (easily found by going to File - Document Settings - Spotlight Preferences and selecting the Lighting Devices: Parameters tab). Example patch worksheet and fixtures. Columns to sync are colored red: Selecting the proper options in the Link Worksheet to Record dialog box: In this example, I used the Channel field as the key. With this plug-in, this process will only really work if you have a single fixture per channel, otherwise it will very likely make all matching channels match whatever is the lowest matching row in the worksheet. In this instance, I would very much recommend not clicking the Check Mismatch button, since it will list out all of the parameters of the Lighting Device object not found in the worksheet (which is very likely a lot of them). Result from running the command: Give this a shot and see if you can make it work for your use case. Quote Link to comment
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