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Truss Grapples


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My understanding on this is that most of the truss manufacturers do not support mid-span connections on their products without a solid structural object such as a corner block.  The majority of the manufacturers are not releasing the engineering data on truss objects to VW as it's proprietary data.  When I spoke to a few truss manufacturer reps at the last LDI and it was pretty much the same response.  

 

This is why Braceworks is only calculating data along the center/center of truss objects/hanging positions and does not account for uneven distribution across all chords of the truss.  The only manufacturer that seems to be forthcoming with their data is Eurotruss... which is useless for most of us in the industry.

 

I too would love for us to be able to plug grapples into the program as they're used quite often in my work flow.

 

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Nice Insight Rob, thank you for that.

 

But for a company like mod truss, who HAS given out all the data, why does the full connectivity of those systems still not work?  It took almost two years for me to be able to make a t section in the XSF library, (without making full custom cross section data, which defeats the point of the product when I am still just "close enough") I think what everyone is trying to say is that, though its a labor of love from the VWX staff, right now its still a broken product, and a very expensive one.  In the corporate world, 99 percent of my rigging is click and go, so I was excited when I saw the house rigging point tool, only to be disappointed to find out hoists wont connect to them....  etc.  I know you all are working hard, but I have to admit the features have been quite slow to roll out.

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Well said CETLV.

 

Our firm purchased braceworks to aid in keeping track of weight as the system is being designed as well as helping to challenge the in-house A/V companies when they come back and say that some points are overweight and need to add 5 motors at $900/day.  We've never assumed that the calculations are 100% accurate and we understand that there are forces/physics in play that we don't pretend to understand.  When it really matters we get rigging companies and structural engineers involved.

 

That being said, we're rather disappointed with how the features don't work without causing issues and how long it takes for the Dev team to rectify the issues.  Not every show is comprised of straight trusses or box grids so not being able to calculate mid span connections or hinge blocks is a huge deal.  2020 did introduce hinge truss objects to fix this issue, however, I've not found one hinge we use consitantly that works the way they advertise.  This and a list of other items are keeping us from fully committing to 2020 until SP1 or even SP2.  I understand that there needs to be some level of "user" beta testing on the software before all the bugs are worked out but this is a little out of hand.

 

Don't get me wrong, I personally love the software.  Its leaps and bounds better than AutoCAD in most categories, which is what my firm converted over from.  However, with the price this software carries, we expect it to not be so broken and continually have to find work-arounds for things.  AutoCAD was very slow to introduce new tools or methods of handling the software but it was robust.  It also seems that many of the tools and the way they work were developed by many people who have never really experienced the day to day operations of this industry.  I for one wouldn't mind if Vectorworks took a year or two off to get the current tool set up and running 100% before launching any additional new features.

 

Thanks again for all the hard work, but we need to see the quality that we're paying for.

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