Customizing Spotlight Plugins

[Justin Smith]

Curious if it's possible to Customize Spotlight (or any other included, standard) plugins that come with the Vectorworks suites, beyond just adding parameters.

I see that it's possible to add additional parameters to the plugin records. I'm using this for instance with the LED Screens plugin. I've added a weight parameter and I can now calculate the weights of the screens directly in my worksheets. That's great, however, I'd like to extend my customized LED Screen plugin with actual code too!

Currently the plugin only works with labels in the 2D View. In this case I'd like to create a 3D label that is added to the LED Screen in 3D, in addition to the standard functionality. Ideally I'd like to execute code after the rest of the plugin is done generating the geometry. It'd be great if this was part of the "Customized" plugin itself. However, if that's not possible, what about a second script that comes in after the fact and adds the 3D label to all of my LED plugins?? I guess that would work, I'd just have to iterate through the drawing and search for plugins records that match the LED Screen Record, correct? Would I be able to add my geometry inside the individual LED Screen PIO's, or would they have to be outside that PIO geometry?

Thanks for any insight

[Miguel Barrera]

This is something that I have thought about but have not had a need to code it. I would think that you can create a custom plugin and then embed the vw plugin within it. You will have to duplicate the vw plugin parameters to control it from your plugin. Then you can add your own code to customize your plugin further.

[C. Andrew Dunning]

Would I be able to add my geometry inside the individual LED Screen PIO's, or would they have to be outside that PIO geometry?

Justin -

You won't be able to add geometry within the existing PIO instance. At first glance, you'd have to do one of 2 things:

1) Create a script that searches the model, grabs suitable data, and places the desired text on the Working Plane adjacent to the PIO instances.

2) Create a PIO that places an LED Screen instance and the desired text. The LED Screen instance and your text would then be "internal" to that new PIO.

That help, at all?

[Justin Smith]

Thanks Andrew and Miguel.

I think I'm going to try Andrew's 1st suggestion, as I've done some similar scripts (working with symbols rather than plugins. )