Saving my custom instruments to a library

[Robert Hunte]

Hello there,

I have finally had the time to delve into creating my own custom symbols for our inventory at the institute I teach.

As the inventory has build up over the years we have gained several different versions of lamps (we have 3 different types of PC's for example), and I am attempting to replicate this in the symbols use in our plots.

I have googled around and followed a couple of guides available (I have the light plot deconstructed book too) and have worked out how to firsly create a symbol and then convert the symbol to an instrument.

Where I am struggling at the moment is saving that instrument in a place that I can access later. I have seen that the base symbols are saved within the document, but I cannot see where the instruments are saved. If I jump into another document and use the symbol all I get is the base symbol and not an instrument.

Any help appreciated! If there is an easier way to do this, I am open!!

Cheers

Robert Hunte.

[michaelk]

Put your symbols in a drawing and save that drawing to a safe place in your computer or server.

Add that file to your favorites in the resource browser. It will now be easily accessible from any drawing.

Many stock symbols use a common nested symbol for 3D geometry. That's probably what you are seeing. If you edit the 3D part of a Source 4 26?, for example you will see that the 3D geometry is a (something) Body symbol.

There is a specific way to build lighting symbols so that there are the correct number of parts and the correct record formats attached to each part. It depends on which version you have.

I haven't read Mr Hillmar's book. VW Help has an explanation. But it's not the sort of thing that sinks in the first couple times you do it. Yell if you need help creating the symbol.

hth

mk

[klinzey]

Robert,

It's not clear from your description where the problem is.

Is the problem that the symbols are inserting as symbols and not lighting devices?

If this is the problem you need too have the light info record attached to the symbol before Vectorworks will automatically recognize it. Take a look in the Vectorworks Help under "Instrument and Accessory Specifications" for details on how to properly attach the record.

If you are having problems making or using symbol libraries files you can take a look at the "Using Vectorworks Resources" in the Vectorworks Help.

Kevin

[Robert Hunte]

Hey there,

Apologies for the lack of information, I realized a couple of hours after posting that I left off my version etc.

So for the record I am using VW2011 SP4 Designer

Kevin, Your suggestion was correct and you have summed up correctly what I am experiencing. I will have a look through that help file and have another go today and see if I can get this to work.

MK, you are very true, I think i will be building a few more until this process sinks in! I am not too fussed on 3d symbols (yet!) so this part of it isn't too much of a concern.

Thanks for the help, I am off to search the help files!

Robert.