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Vision fixture position mystery


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Hi

 

Hope somebody has an idea here, I am running out...

 

All my fixtures was playing nice in Vision, but for some reason in my latest document, some strobes on the floor have decided to come in low, inside the stage decks.

 

The decks are 1.4m and the z position of the strobes is also 1.4m

 

In vectorworks, the strobes are standing on the decks

1091290314_Screenshot2019-07-03at14_31_31.thumb.png.491fcaac9b8553e78f05df90756ff5e8.png

 

In vision, they are sunk into the decks, you can see them barely sticking up here.

 

1104453321_Screenshot2019-07-03at14_29_39.thumb.png.eb969cfebfdb6930dcb8904fd6e2816b.png

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Sometimes this is a rotational issue, but in this instance it does seem position based...

 

I'd confirm that the X/Y/Z Position values in Vision (units of inches and Y is Up) align with X/Y/Z Position values in VW (Z is Up). You may need to convert between units of measurement here, but in my experience this usually comes over without issue.

 

My guess is that the issue is differences between the VW/Vision content itself. If this is the case, you can possibly call up the tech support team or the fixture request team and see if they can get it resolved for you.

 

In the meantime, Vision does KIND OF support multiple selection and in this case you may be able to leverage it. Let's assume that in VW the strobes have a Z-Height of 24 inches and they look correct in VW. Let's also assume that this came over to Vision "correctly" with a Y-Height of 24 inches:

If all of your strobes in Vision are at 24 inches Y-Height and you need them to be "raised up" another foot, then you can select all of your strobes at 24 inches Y-Height and simply adjust one of the strobes in the Properties Palette to have a Y-Height of 36 inches. This should set all of the selected strobes to have a Y-Height of 36 inches. This was just an example, but hopefully you understand how you can leverage Vision's somewhat broken multiple selections to work around your issue.

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Hi

I took a closer look. They are being flipped upside down in Vision. It must be that Vision assumes they are hanging lights. Any ideas on how to prevent this, or why they would want to flip? I have some movers standing on the same deck and they are not being flipped.

 

Thank you

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

If the issue is rotational, it may be easier to fix! A little background...

 

VW models all fixtures, regardless of type, to be in the "hung position". Vision models all moving light fixtures in the "floor mounted position" and all other lights in the "hung" position. (...mostly... this is where a lot of discrepancies occur between the two products... VW has always has a standard for modeling fixtures, Vision has not)

 

There are two ways these lights re-rotate to account for this discrepancy.

1. If you are using MVR, the flip happens at import time in Vision. You can try to uncheck the "Flip Moving Lights" checkbox. (Note: If this checkbox is needed for some lights but not others, try merging together two separate MVRs (one MVR that needs the "Flip Moving Lights" option checked and another MVR that needs it unchecked).)

2. If you are using ESC, this flip actually happens at export time rather than import time. In this case, the ESC Exporter checks to see if the type of the fixture in VW is "Moving Head". If it is, it gets flipped. If it is not, it does not get flipped. So you can play around with the fixture type in VW to control how lights are flipped in ESC 😉

 

I hope this helps!

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Hi

 

Sounds encouraging. I am using Spotlight and Vectorworks Vision, latest versions and either export ESC or just "send to vision" from the file menu,

both exports have the same flippin behaviour. I patch the console manually, no MVR or GTDF for me (yet).

 

I added a fresh fixture and just rotated it up. That worked fine. I have moved these fixtures, they used to be hanging from a truss. And they had a focuspoint.

So along the way I must have baked in some rotational data of some sort and now they are confused.

 

Solution: Replace the fixture with a fresh unconfused instance.

 

Thanks for your help ☀️

 

 

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So I ran into it again, it's definitely happening when you give them a focus point. But only in vision, in VW they look right. Bug?


This is a bit of a problem, because to program these lights in vision, they really have to be focussed for it to look right. And dialling it in manually is not really feasible.

Still looking for a solution I guess...

 

EDIT: I made a test file and sent it to support. I also tried MVR, but the problem remains. The aforementioned "Flip Moving Lights" option only affects movers and not my strobe.

 

In the attached files, the strobe is standing upright on the stage deck in vectorworks, but slips under the deck in vision. Rotating it up in vision is not an option because of how the fixture is focussed.

 

575736101_Screenshot2019-07-03at22_05_15.thumb.png.69df91dac92fb6f749ddd9dbc69ec697.png437641824_Screenshot2019-07-03at22_06_25.thumb.png.9bc66ee68c50d19c0e94bc91f8d34dbf.png

Archive.zip

Edited by fuberator
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hi All,

 

I just wanted to pop in and give a little clarification here. 

7 hours ago, bbudzon said:

VW models all fixtures, regardless of type, to be in the "hung position". Vision models all moving light fixtures in the "floor mounted position" and all other lights in the "hung" position. (...mostly... this is where a lot of discrepancies occur between the two products... VW has always has a standard for modeling fixtures, Vision has not) 

 

 

Brandon is mostly correct here. Most, Vision fixtures that do not have moving heads are modeled as hung. In this particular case, it is not.

 

7 hours ago, bbudzon said:

2. If you are using ESC, this flip actually happens at export time rather than import time. In this case, the ESC Exporter checks to see if the type of the fixture in VW is "Moving Head". If it is, it gets flipped. If it is not, it does not get flipped. So you can play around with the fixture type in VW to control how lights are flipped in ESC 😉

 

 

As Brandon has said, the exporter looks for moving heads and flips them. Everything else is left alone, which is what's causing your issue. That particular fixture, needs to be flipped during the export, but isn't. So the quickest and easiest fix is the one he described. Here's a bit of extra detail in case it's helpful.

 

In Vectorworks, select all of the fixtures that are being exported incorrectly. In your case, the SGM P-5.

Under the Shape tab of the Object Info Palette, the first data field under the Edit button is the Device Type drop down box. By default, it is set to Light. Change that to Moving Light as highlighted here:

Device Type.JPG

 

Vectorworks may take a moment to update the OIP, once you've selected Moving Light. When it does, reexport your file, and open in Vision.

All of your P-5s in Vision, should now be oriented to match Vectorworks.

 

Vision P-5.JPG

Vectorworks P-5.JPG

 

I've attached my test file as well. I've set the right fixtures Device Type to Moving Light, and the left to Light, so it should be easy to see the difference.

P5 Orientation.vwx

 

Hopefully this helps,

Mark

  • Like 1
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  • 4 months later...
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
9 minutes ago, fuberator said:

This problem has re-emerged for me in 2020, and setting the fixtures to moving light no longer fixes it. The flip checkbox makes no difference.

 

Would you mind posting your file or pm'ing it to me?

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
10 minutes ago, fuberator said:

I changed them to moving lights per the instructions from last time, but the only thing I can do is manually flip them in vision

 

You may have hit a point in which ESC may be better than MVR. Let me explain...

 

The ESC File Format is Vision specific. No other program in the world can read it, including VW. VW is the only program I am aware of that can export ESC as well (Vision cannot, as odd as this may seem). My point in all of this is that because the ESC exported from VW can only go to Vision, VW can do "special Vision stuff" at export time. This means you can control exports in VW through things like the the fixture type being set to Moving Light.

 

The MVR File Format is generic. Any program that supports MVR can import it. Any program that supports MVR could also export it.

My point here is that because MVR can be sent to any program, VW cannot do "special Vision stuff" at export time. This means you cannot control exports in VW through things like the fixture type being set to Moving Light.

 

Looking at it another way, VW flips Moving Lights during ESC export. So the lights are actually flipped inside of the ESC. Vision does not do any flipping at import time for ESC because VW already did the "flipping".

Because VW could not do this for MVR (and because we haven't fully implemented GDTF in Vision), we had to implement the "flip" at import time in Vision instead of export time in VW. The downside to this is that you lose control over each individual fixture being flipped or not.

(Note: It may not be obvious, but once we get GDTF reading properly in Vision most of these issues go away.)

 

My suggestion would be to either use a mix of ESC and MVR, or use MVR entirely and use the new Rotate 3D menu command to fix all disoriented fixtures in (more or less) a single click.

Edited by bbudzon
Clarifications
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I'm not sure if you were able to use the new Rotate 3D Menu command to solve this workflow issue or not. But if you were, I'm glad that I was able to get that feature in to make things easy for you!

 

(The new Move and Rotate 3D menu commands are so incredibly powerful in Vision as they allow you to perform arithmetic on multiple objects where you could not before! My favorite example is taking all trusses at various trim heights and "adding 5 feet of trim" to them all. Previously, this was not possible in Vision as you could only assign all sticks of truss to be at a height of 5 feet! 😛)

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