scaling/resizing lighting device icon

[hansL]

dear informed ones,

is there any possibility to resize/scale the icons of lighting devices/instruments inserted from the spotlight-libraries (vw11)?

(i found a funny workaround: to double the size of the icons: select all - resize with scale tool with factor 2 and "entire drawing" checked - select all - resize with factor 0.5 and "entire drawing" unchecked. drawbacks: other symbols -ie lighting positions- scale as well; after this operation vw was behaving funny and even crashed).

thanks for your advice, h*ns.

[Mickey]

Huh?

What are you trying to achieve?

Are you trying to make an individual instrument larger?

[hansL]

hi mickey,

it's not about enlarging an individual instrument, but all of them. imagine a large scale plan of a big venue with just a few instruments. what's the point in having them plottet 5mm big?

of course we could put them on a different scaled layer but this is technically incorrect. the positions are not correct and when plotting just a portion in a smaller scale the icons should have the same size (they are icons and should help the reader understand the plan - who cares that an etc s4 has a size of 37cm?). and snapping to the lighting positios is not working as well.

h*ns

[C Dopher]

i get it. you want to have instruments that come out the same drawn size no matter the scale you choose to print the rest of the theatre in...so as to make hang cards for the electricians or something that are clearly readable, even if the instrument itself is not to scale.

i can't think of a way to do this that doesn't involve making duplicate instrument symbols first and then plopping down those new symbols right on top of the original plot on a differently scaled layer - turn layers on and off as you wish. It MAY be possible to do an entire library at once by going into its VW file and doing the "scale all" thing (you'd have to place an instance of each symbol first). Or just pick out the units you want to do that to and do them as a batch in a separate, new library file.

Also, keep in mind that the scale function can have different effects depending on whether objects are grouped or ungrouped, and that can work to your advantage.

this seems a little strange to me, but let me know if you get it to work.

[klinzey]

The easiest way would be to scale the symbol, or make a duplicate symbol and scale it. You can use Find and Modify to swap out the symbols in the lighting Device.

If you have not manually moved the labels of the instrument, changing the original symbol then running the refresh instruments command should update all the instruments and move the labels into the proper position.