Simple Schedules

[RickR]

I've been all over the board and help files...

I want to add up the wattage on each dimmer. Simple, clean and normal. Not however listing every fixture on the job.

Somebody must have done this by now!

[RickR]

Added details:

If setup the worksheet in the image.

Then what happens when the fixtures on a dimmer aren't all the same?

I need to keep this in VW so it all updates as I go. I could do this in 10 minutes in Excel. I would think totaling up materials would be built in, and simple.

[Sam Jones]

It is likely that your wattage field is a text field and not a number field. If it is coming from a SpotLight "Lighting Device" it is a text field. There is no way to convert the value of a text field in a worksheet to a number, so you're screwed. A vectorscript could be written to fill out a custom worksheet, but this is non trivial. Send me your drawing with the worksheet you are trying to make, and I'll see if you have other options than the dead end I've described.

[RickR]

I appreciate the offer, but you nailed the issue.

I'm using the "Lighting Device" and the feild is text and therefore un-addable. Perhaps I should abandon Spotlight features and just make a simple record and a simple worksheet. I'm still defining my workflow, and do a lot of different types of drawings so flexablilty is an issue.

Can the PIO be tweaked? WHY make it text field? Dimmer and circuit, color and many other commonly numeric fields I can see being text. But wattage is a measurement as much as length or area. Overloading is something everyone in lighting has to worry about. How can this basic element be missing?

What do you use to keep track of loads? I didn't see anything like this in AutoPlot. I see a lot of references to 'LightWright', but I'm doing more architectural work than theatrical, so that would be overkill.

BTW: I just pointed a collegue to your chain hoist tools. He was asking me about making something, and I knew I couldn't do it right. He loves it all, but is a little overwhelmed, as he is a CAD novice... He tried to use it without reading the instructions!

Hmm, a note on the wish list?

[rocitop]

Its pretty quick to export the data from VW into Excel but I don't know of a way to make Excel automatically add up the wattages based on the dimmer number. Adding another row and creating a sum would not be hard, however time consuming and if you make any changes in VW you would have to start from scratch.

Do you have an idea in mind to have it whip something together quickly?

This is something Lightwright does very well but I hear you on the overkill part.

Its a bit late for me to start on the project tonight but let me run this outline for a script by you Sam;

User is prompted for the start and end numbers for the dimmer system they want to check.

The script selects each light or group of lights by dimmer number

This is the gray area for me, would using an integer as the variable work to filter out any of the text? IE return a valid response 575 instead of 575W ? If that idea is sound add the value of the wattage field to the total.

After all the selected objects have been totaled print the total to a worksheet. (I haven't the slightest clue how much work dealing with a worksheet through vectorscripts is. Would this be a fair project to learn on?)

Repeat for the next dimmer number.

I am guessing that I am glossing over some details but is the idea valid?

Edited July 11, 2008 by rocitop

[rocitop]

Spent some time on the idea and I could not some up with a way to get just numbers from any of the fields. There goes my idea for a script to sum weights by positions.

[RickR]

>>sum weights by positions.

Yet another basic usage one would think should be built in.

Yes Excel & LW do this stuff in a heartbeat, but what's the point of integrated data if you always have to import/export?

[Sam Jones]

Most of the time, making a field a text field makes it more flexible. It allows for alphanumeric values. Yea, I know, who needs the stupid "w" in the wattage field. Actually, some people are quite attached to it, when they use the SpotLight paperwork.

It eliminates the need to convert back and forth between text and numeric values when importing and exporting. Importing and exporting is always straight text. It is certainly possible to do those conversions, but this is simpler.

I keep track of loads in LW. Although, I admit with each of my fixtures being 575w or higher and my dimmers having a 20 amp capacity (ok, the occasitional 6000w capacity), keeping track of dimmer loads is pretty simple for me. I just sort by dimer and look. Buss and leg loads are another matter, and are nicely handled in LW. Many people want the all in one program, and that is understandable, but right now the drawing program does the drawing well, and the the database programs, manipulate the data well, as long as they can share data, let each program concentrate on its strengths. Using vectorscript, it would be possible to parse the numeric value out of the wattage field as long as the number always preceded any letters. That same vectorscript would probably have to create the worksheet that used the numeric value, since there is no other field to put the result in. Surprisingly for you, there hasn't really been much demand for this because of LW, I can put it on a list, but it won't be near the top.

Talking about summing weights is a whole other kettle of fish. I can make a vectorscript that sums the weight fields of the fixtures on a position, but that only is as accurate as the data. What happens when some fixtures don't have their weight field filled in? Will you notice? Do the entered or listed weights inclusive of the pipe clamp? What about cable weights? What about truss weights? Even if you want to input all of that data, what do you imagine the user interface to do that would be. Do I, as a plug-in author want to expose myself to any of these problems and the big mess that errors might cause. I have a feeling that I am eventually going to write a position weight calculating macro, but it will have lots of warning alerts.

[RickR]

Everything you say Sam make complete sense to me. If I was doing full time production LD work then I wouldn't have even bothered with this issue. Your point on the liability of weights is just a sign of our societal standards.

I did have a thought on what might be a simple way to handle basic sums. Since I've yet to learn vectorscript I would appreciate your view, before I tackle anything.

1. The basic "limitation" is the field formating. So we create a record format that has numeric feilds where we want them. Even I can do that!

2. A script copies the data from the PIO and standard records to the new record. I would even avoid trying to parse it out to keep it simple. Maybe I would generating a warning to help avoid unintentinal values. If text is in the data then sums won't work - Fine!

3. Create a worksheet based on the new record. It's no longer 2way or auto updating, but at least it's all in one place.

Of maybe I just buy into LW...

Do you know if VW Architect has anything on this issue? I know it has some electrical functions, but I never did get a detailed description of what they are.

Anyway, thanks for the efforts.

[Pat Stanford]

This could work, but it is dependent on the data you put into the fields. If you enter just numbers, then it would be fairly easy to script converting into a numeric field in a different record. If you enter data like 24# or 37.5 lbs, it will be much trickier. This is the best solution I have come up with for this type of situation so far.

Please also note that it can be a two way worksheet. Any record attached to a symbol or PIO can be edited in the worksheet. If you want to use it that way for your scenario, you need to create two scripts. One to go from the PIO to the record and one to go from the record to the PIO field.

Pat

[Sam Jones]

Unfortunately, you can't just copy the text field to the number field with a vectorscript, because if there are any letters in the copied text field, the value put into the number field will be 0. So, no matter what you do, you are stuck writing some vectorscript code that will change 575W to 575 and 14lb to 14 and then putting it in a worksheet or another record. I'm assuming that you are not going into every PIO, symbol instance, and symbol definition and changing the values to totally numeric text fields. If you have totally numeric text fields, then copying the values into the numeric field is not a problem.