Auto-renumber Positions Problem

[lalcaraz]

My assistant has had problems on the plot we are working on.

We have to leave added units as a letter designation (ie. 1a, 2a, etc) and also have accessories like twinspins that need to stay with the letter designation.

She has turned off Auto Renumber but the Twin Spins and all units on the Beam 3 position continue to renumber themselves, causing her an extra 1/2 hour of work everytime she exports back to Lightwright

Any ideas?

Thanks

Lonnie

[kmoore1]

quote:

---

Originally posted by lalcaraz:

She has turned off Auto Renumber but the Twin Spins and all units on the Beam 3 position continue to renumber themselves, causing her an extra 1/2 hour of work everytime she exports back to Lightwright

---

Accessories automatically get the unit number of the instrument they are attached to. The intention was that when you change the unit number for an instrument the accessory automagically changes as well. Unfortunately it isn't being really smart about the unit number and just overwrites the whole thing. So if the unit number was 1 for the fixture and you painstakingly went into the accessory and changed the unit number to 1a for the attached accessory and the unit changes to 2 it overwrites the 1a with a 2. I'm assuming your trying to get the aforementioned behaviour, or am I misreading your post?

Regardless, the only way I was able to make the accessory not get the instrument's unit number was to break the association between the two (spotlight can be awfully tenacious)

To Do this, Select the accessory, or all of the accessories, you want to "fix". Go to the Object Info Palette Scroll all the way to the very bottom of the parameter list. The last item in the list is the UID. This is the magic ID number that SpotLight uses to keep track of which accessory is attached to which fixture, where data needs to go when going to and coming from lightwright, which fixutres are multicircuit and who their neighbors are, etc. In general it is a not a good idea to mess with this field as it will break things. In this case things are already broken so we don't have to worry about that. ;-)

Select the UID field and clear it out completely. (this is probably best acheived by clicking in the "Lightwright ID" field and then tabbing into the UID field" and hitting backspace) SpotLight will Immediately pick new UIDs for the selected items so don't be surprised when the field fills itself back out again. This should break the association between the instrument and the accessory. Now the two will behave completely independantly. This also means that moving and or rotating the lighting instrument will no longer move and rotate the accessory.

HTH

[ 06-18-2002: Message edited by: kmoore1 ]

[lalcaraz]

Kevin

Thanks for the response, I believe we have gone round with this before, as I recall the answer -- will this be fixed in V10?

But the real question is, why is 1 position on the plot notoriously renumbering itself when autonumber is Off?

Thanks

Lonnie

[kmoore1]

quote:

---

Originally posted by lalcaraz:

KevinBut the real question is, why is 1 position on the plot notoriously renumbering itself when autonumber is Off?

---

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbably, must be the truth." - Sherlock Holmes ;-)

If the instruments are renumbering themselves then there is still a position with a position name that matches theirs that has the auto-numbering turned on. Double check to make sure the instruments are truely assigned to the position you think they are.

One way to cheat if you can't find the offending lighting position is to select the instruments and change the position name slightly. If it isn't an exact match with the actual lighting position's name it won't find it. So 1st_Electric can become 1st__Electric and the auto-numbering will stop.

HTH