strange behavior with Lighting Symbol Maintenance tool

[ajs]

Using 2014 SP2 on Mac OS 10.6.8 MBP 2.2 GHz i7, 480/12

I'm using the Lighting Symbol Maintenance tool to update weights of equipment that I commonly use, and then updating all instruments via the checkbox. My mission is to have only numeric values in the weight field, so that a worksheet can extract that value to calculate a given position's equipment weight. The instruments themselves are a file that I've been updating for several years, and recently imported into 2014.

Most of the time, this works just fine. But I have a few instruments that, when I attempt to edit them, present me with a greyed out 'OK' button in the Edit Instrument Data dialog. So if I change the field, I can't OK out of it and implement the change. I can only Cancel, leaving the weight (or any other) data untouched.

There doesn't seem to be a common element so far. For instance, the problem children are currently either Martin or VariLite fixtures, but not all of the ones in this file. Some edit just fine. Some just aren't buying it. If I do it the old-fashioned way & edit the record attached to the symbol, that works fine-it's only when using the LSM tool that I run into this. It's generally easier to edit this info via the LSM tool, so that's what I'd rather do.

Any ideas what might cause/fix this?

Thanx

-andrew

http://tinyurl.com/northernspark

[klinzey]

Andrew,

Can you post a sample file with the problem symbols?

Otherwise I would contact tech support directly so they can take a look at the problem symbols and determine what's different.

The only things I can think to check is to make sure you are not dealing with referenced symbols and that they have the proper light info record attached. For 2014 we made a slight modification to the beam and field angle fields but that should not cause any issues.

[JBenghiat]

Yes, please post a file and / or contact tech support.

There are only two things I can think of that would cause the OK button to be inactive.

If a symbol is referenced, you cannot edit it's data in LSM (you can, of course, open the library file and run LSM there). If the symbol is referenced, it will be in italics in the LSM list and it should not be able to be edited. By the way, VW will allow you to edit Light Info for a referenced symbol, but as soon as the references update (like on a file open), the edit will be overwritten.

The other is if you enter non-numeric data in a numeric field. For example, if you have a zoom range in the field angle field. This would be the same as if you were entering data directly in the data pane, but possible a converted / imported file could have old data that does not follow a strict numeric format.

-Josh

[ajs]

hmmmm.

Well, none of the problem symbols are referenced, but all of them seem to have numbers plus text in the 'Candlepower' field. If I delete the text and leave the numeric value, suddenly the Edit Instrument Data Dialog gets overjoyed to change other things. The extra text in the Candlepower field is not visible in the default opening of the tool on my equipment. By expanding that column, I can see the common link between all the problem children.

So, Mr. Benghiat, you seem to have found the trouble. Thank you kindly for the pointer to the way out of this maze.

Mr. Linzey, there seems to be nothing in either the tool itself, or its online help to indicate this source of conflict. Makes it extra mysterious, if some fields support one kind of entry, others don't, and nothing tells me 'yo, numeric values only!' or suchlike.

Gotta say, be nice if that were to change.

Thank you both for your trouble!

-andrew

www.saboedraws.com