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Spotlight instruments VERY odd behavior


ajpen

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i am having these problems, all with Spotlight Instruments:

In Plan view, label legends migrate from their proper place on the symbol when the hybrid fixture is moved in 3D space (on Z axis)

In Plan view, select "Refresh Instruments" and all legends jump back in to correct position... but now certain random fixtures have moved up or down on the Z axis in 3D space.

In Front view, move the fixtures back in to proper 3D space... and the legends move. We're back where we started.

In addition to this odd behavior, certain fixtures will not move to certain new coordinates, almost as if they are locked. This does not apply to all of the fixtures, however. For instance, if all fixtures of a particular lighting position are selected (in Front view) and "Align" is performed, let's say to "Top", the fixtures line up. Grab them all again, drag them up or down and they all jump to different heights. Now some of them just can't be moved in certain directions!!!!

And here's one more: Grab the Light Position Object, then drag it in any direction (Front View). Fixtures jump "off" the object, appearing in a new location entirely. Now use Undo to fix it, and they all jump to the same Z height, even though they were not lined up to begin with. Undo is taking the drawing to a different state than it was before the action was performed...

Some things to note:

All fixtures in question are assigned to a Light Position Object.

All fixtures and the Light Position Object are together in a group. Weird things like this still happen whether they are in or out of a group.

Vectorworks has been relaunched, and the computer has been rebooted as well... a few times.

Anyone else see this kind of thing happen?????

Help!?

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Interesting...

i stopped using Spotlight in 10.5 and 12.5 because the label legends kept getting screwed up. That problem was fixed in v2008, so i recommenced using Spotlight, as i then export to ESP Vision, and using Spotlight records makes that process easier.

Sometimes these fixtures move themselves way off the page, say 400' away from the model (away from the Light Position Object).

Right now my workaround is exceptionally tedious: i go to my plan view and refresh the fixtures so that i can print a plot, then i have to reposition all of the fixtures in 3D to render the model or export to ESP. i try to play tricks, i.e. change the information in the records first, then refresh instruments to print plots, then Undo back to the point just before the Refresh command so the lights return to their proper 3D coordinates, then render the model or export. Like i said, tedious.

i am going to re-draft the entire model. This particular document has gone through several revisions, where i retain the original elements (i.e. fixture count) and move them around to suit the new idea (i.e. remove arena stage, substitute amphitheatre). Perhaps there is a point at which this "corruption" was introduced, so i'll post here again if it happens in the new model, started from scratch.

Here's hoping someone from Nemetschek reads this thread...

aj

Edited by ajpen
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And here's another one:

In my symbol definitions for fixtures (in the 2D plan half of the hybrid) i have small words ("Performance", "Wash", etc. to indicate with 100% certainty what type of fixture it is. These words appear just at the top of the symbol in the 2D definition. When i convert the symbol to a Spotlight Instrument, the word "jumps" several points to a new relative location in that instance of the symbol. The instance of the symbol that i have in my drawing legend is unaffected.

Why does the appearance of the symbol change in this way when it is converted to a Spotlight Instrument? (this is before assigning a label legend)

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More things i learned during the re-draft...

The aforementioned "altering" of the symbol definitions is not consistent. Some symbols have their text moved in the 2D plan when converting to instruments, and some don't. i really wonder if there was an inconsistency in the original drafting of the symbols, but they were all created at about the same time in as consistent a fashion as i could muster.

Fixtures jump around a bit in the new drawing, but they are more predictable and are easy to fix. Does anyone else have these things happen?

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I don't know about spotlight, but the symbols used with the Custom Title block can be set to use the default font or the font they were created in. If you set a text block in a title block symbol to use the class Line Weight and Class Line Color, then the font will be replaced with the default font. If you set them to anything other than by class, the font will remain as set in the symbol.

Could this explain what you are seeing?

Pat

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Thanks, but that's not what's happening. The font and formatting of the text stays the same, but the text moves.

And again with Spotlight Instruments, every time i move the 2D plan symbol, the fixture jumps to a new height in 3D space. In this new, re-drafted model, the symbol seems to consistently jump back to Z=0, unless i try to move several fixtures at once, in which case only some of them jump to Z=0 and some stay where i had them.

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I've noticed that in VW2008 when you drag and drop a fixture it picks up the position name and z height from the new lighting position object that you have dragged it to. So perhaps you are dragging the fixtures to somewhere that is not a lighting position object, and they are looking for information that is not there, and therefore setting the values (Z height, Position Name) to 0/none?

Could this explain that aspect?

I'm also having the problem of manipulating items in 3d space and returning to plan view and having label legends messed up. My specific problem is that the Channels (only label class besides purpose on at the moment) jump about 10' further out on whatever axis they are on. Same thing, refresh instruments returns the labels to the proper place. I haven't stressed about it yet because it is an annoyance, but hasn't really hindered my process to much because my plot is small and refresh all instruments doesn't take too long. In a week when the plot is between 400 and 700 instruments.... then I'll worry.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Made a discovery...

i use ESP Vision as well. i went back through archived versions of this document, and found that fixtures were getting random values entered in to certain Spotlight fields after an ESP Vision export.

For instance, a Mac2k Wash was assigned the color value M203. A Mac700 Profile mysteriously got the color value R385.

There is no R385 in the document at all, and i don't even know what M203 could be. i did not enter these values. There was also gobo information in these moving lights: MT Spiral.dds. The .dds file extension tipped me off because i know ESP uses .dds files for the gobo patterns that are used in visualization.

i went back to a version of the document that was pre-ESP export, and lo and behold, fixtures can be moved around at will and they don't jump their Z coordinates!

My workaround right now will be to save under a different filename before exporting... but this adds another step to the workflow.

Anyone else seeing these behaviors (described above in many posts) after using ESP functions in the document???

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