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Accessories not Exporting to Lightwright


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Hi all,

I am attempting to get Lightwright to recognize that the instruments in my Vectorworks have accessories attached to them. I have poured through the forums and have found similar situations, but none of those solutions have worked thus far.

  • In LW, I have checked under Setup>Vocabulary that the "Separate accessories with:" field is filled in with a "+" and nothing else.
  • I am using custom VW accessories, but I have attached the Light Info Record and listed the Device Type as "Accessory". The custom objects use the Accessory Insertion Tool by default when I insert them and the insertion tool functions normally, allowing me to select a position, rotation, and instrument to associate the accessory with.
  • The standard accessories (such as ColorRam scrollers from the Vectorworks libraries) act no differently, appearing to successfully insert but not appearing on LW documentation.
  • Since I am working on a file initially imported from an AutoCAD .dwg, I tried creating a new set of documents: a blank VW drawing, a new LW file, and using all standard symbols from Vectorworks libraries. I was still unable to have LW recognize the instruments.

Any other tips or options (or questions) that might help would be greatly appreciated. For the record, I am using Vectorworks 2013 SP3 and Lightwright 5.0.25.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am using custom VW accessories, but I have attached the Light Info Record and listed the Device Type as "Accessory".

[*]The standard accessories (such as ColorRam scrollers from the Vectorworks libraries) act no differently, appearing to successfully insert but not appearing on LW documentation.

[*]Since I am working on a file initially imported from an AutoCAD .dwg, I tried creating a new set of documents: a blank VW drawing, a new LW file, and using all standard symbols from Vectorworks libraries. I was still unable to have LW recognize the instruments.

Any other tips or options (or questions) that might help would be greatly appreciated. For the record, I am using Vectorworks 2013 SP3 and Lightwright 5.0.25.

There are two kinds of "Accessories": #1 is "Accessory" and #2 is "Static Accessory". Static Accessories are things like top hats and barndoors that do not have channels or power. Accessories are devices that attach to other lights and have power and/or control channels. Be sure to use the appropriate Device Type in your symbol definitions.

Also be sure that after you click to insert the accessory on the drawing and rotate it that you then click on the light that it attaches to (on my system the light symbol pre-highlights in red after I rotate the symbol if needed). That final click is what attaches both kinds of accessories to their light.

Accessories will always get their own worksheet row in Lightwright. Static Accessories will appear in Lightwright's Accessory column. Also, the name of the static accessory in Lightwright will be the name of the symbol, not the name entered in the OIP or Light Info Record. This is a limitation of Vectorworks, not LW.

And BTW, the current version of Lightwright is 5.0.40, you're a few years behind...;)

- John McKernon

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Hi John,

First, I thank you for the response! Secondly, although I know you advertise it on your website, it is nice to see that you are giving personal support to Lightwright :)

As for the accesssories, after a quick self-test I do see now that the Static Accessories are the ones that show up in the accessory column in Lightwright. I have indeed been using normal Accessories, as they are scrollers and have their own channel. I suppose my question then changes: Is there a way to have normal, non-static accessories appear in the accessory column as well?

And as for my Lightwright version, I guess I realized the version I was using was behind, just maybe not by that much. Oops.

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I suppose my question then changes: Is there a way to have normal, non-static accessories appear in the accessory column as well?

No, because "normal non-static accessories" are, to Lightwright, an instrument with it's device type set of "Device", which by definition has the data fields for channels, dimmers, color, etc. If the accessory you're inserting in VW is a color scroller, then it needs power, channel, and a color (the scroll definition). If it doesn't need any of these things, then change it's device type in the VW symbol definition to Static Accessory.

And BTW, this isn't the best place to post Lightwright questions, as I don't have any way of monitoring posts - Google Alerts notified me about this one, but those can take up to a week to be noticed by Google. So if you have a direct Lightwright question, it's best to post it on my web site.

Edited by John McKernon
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