Boom 3D/Plan Representation

[Joshua Randall]

I made a boom stand and vertical pipe lighting position symbol, and placed instruments on it in side view. On the top/plan view all of the instruments show up on top of each other, which is fairly useless for the sake of hanging the show. I'd like to be able to have the instruments in the correct position in the 3D view so that I can render their beams, but I can't figure out how to make them appear elsewhere on the plan. I thought there might be something I could do with hybrid 2d/3d symbols, but when I tried that I couldn't get the instruments to be in both places at once. Am I missing something?

If I was drafting this by hand, I would just draw the boom as a pipe on the plot with an extension line to the actual boom location. I'd really like to figure out how to do something like that in VW while still having the 3D representation correct. How are others doing booms or vertical pipes?

[Jim_Allen]

How about drawing the booms at an angle? That way they show in plan and will still work in 3D?

Jim

[jeff]

I've been contemplating this problem too. The best I've been able to do is create a 2d/3d symbol for the boom itself, with the 2d boom at an angle and the 3d boom straight up. Lights are inserted along the line of the 2d boom, get the Z-axis set by hand, are moved to the pipe origin to draw the beam, and then moved back, one by one. 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.

[kmoore1]

quote:

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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.

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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