merging record formats

[ericjames]

I just received a repertory light plot for a theatre that my tour will be going to in the coming weeks. The rep plot was made in vectorworks, but its an old version of vectorworks (they thought it was 2009, it has the .mcd extension). Of course, I opened it in my copy of 2010 and it asked me to save a file name, etc, etc, etc. The file opened and everything looks like it worked, except the instruments are not "lighting fixtures", just symbols.

If I choose the 'data' field on the object info pallete, I find that there is a "fixture data" record attached to all of the lights with the channel, dimmer, etc info in the record.

I can click on each light and choose "convert to instrument" which fills out the channel, dimmer, wattage, position info for the newly created fixtures, but not the rest of the data. Depending on the orientation of the fixtures, it also screws up the placement of the label legend info and the orientation of the fixtures.

Is the "fixture data" record an old format that has been replaced the "light info" record in newer versions? Is there an easy to upgrade the drawing so that it behaves correctly and with proper information in version 2010? Is there simply a way to merge the 2 records into one?

Please help! The original file and the ver. 2010 file is attached if you would like to see what I mean.

Thanks

Eric

[SAR]

The .mcd extension was replaced starting with 2008. I briefly looked a your plot in 2011. I am not sure if you are changing all the instrument info for your "show" or want to also keep what appears to be the house rep info. Are you wanting to add records to the symbols that have default info records i.e. instrument type, weight, beam and field angles, etc. Or do you just want the usual paperwork info like channel,position,color etc.If you want to just put in your new show info then detach the fixture data record from your symbols and when you convert all to "lighting instruments" your "show" data appears correctly. You will have to add instrument types for each lamp since there is currently no attached light info record containing default data. If you find you want default instrument info (as you probably already know) your going to have to attach the light info record to those symbols and fill in the symbol defaults you need. It also looks like you will have to re adjust your legends a bit to properly fit into those containers. Not sure about keeping both records the way things are set up now.

One other thing,if you have not already noticed, is that when you convert to lighting instruments some of your pipe side facing lights will flip 180?. This is because the file has been converted from a much earlier version before a change was made in regards to side lights crossing the center line. (can not remember what it was though)

Steve R

[ericjames]

In an ideal world, I would be able to keep the position, unit #, dimmer, weight, etc information. I will be changing the channel and color info for my plot.

Yes, I did notice the flipping of the instruments and having to adjust all of the label legends... I guess that is the part I was trying to avoid doing.

Thanks for your help!

Eric

[Sam Jones]

Eric,

If you still need this converted, let me know. It uses an old version of AutoPlotVW and was never a SpotLight document. I have various tools to deal with this. Unfortunately it requires converting the document to a new version of AutoPlotVW and then converting that document to SpotLight. An additional problem is that the instrument type field is not used consistently. I have found 3 instrument types that are all supposed to be ETC Source 426. My conversion macro will convert 1 instrument type at a time. At one level it might be easier to make another instrument field and place Spotlight fixtures on top of the other fixtures, but that doesn't transfer the data. The conversion will transfer the data, but even after you find the different instrument type versions, you will probably have some Label Legend massaging to do. Let me know.

HTH

Sam

[ericjames]

hey Sam,

Thank you for the information and the offer to help. However, I have already gone through and made everything work. Its great to know what is going on though.

Thanks again

Eric