Lighting Pipe Style - great potential but has fatal flaw

[SB Lighting]

The lighting pipe style has the potential to be a wonderful feature.  Unfortunately, it has a major downfall in that it records pipe length as part of the "style".  This really hampers the effectiveness of this tool. If it didn't record pipe length, it would be a fantastic tool for quickly setting the look of every lighting pipe in the theater.  As it is, you need a new "style" for every different length of pipe.  That means it functions essentially the same way that a symbol does, rather than providing a unique and tremendously useful feature.

[markdd]

when you create a style, go to the Plugin Style button of the object and select Plugin Style/Instance settings

  

 

In the list that opens, make sure that the Total length is set to By Instance 

 

When you use the Pipe tool, select the Lighting Pipe style and make sure that you have Line Insertion Mode active in the mode bar. After that you should get what you are hoping for.

 

Hope that works for you

[SB Lighting]

Yes, that  works - thanks!  I still feel like pipe length should probably be off by default rather than having to go to a separate menu to change it to "by instance".  I literally cannot think of one situation in my industry when having pipe length as a part of style would prove useful, particularly since you already need to create a symbol (with a set pipe length) in order to make a hanging position.  That seems to accomplish the same thing without impinging on the style function.  Still, now that I understand how to navigate, it is a real time-saver, so thanks!

[markdd]

17 minutes ago, SB Lighting said:

I literally cannot think of one situation in my industry when having pipe length as a part of style would prove useful, particularly since you already need to create a symbol (with a set pipe length) in order to make a hanging position.

I can! Working in a venue with a set number of fixed pipe lengths. Also, if you worked for a firm that had inventory that was fixed then this can be useful. 
 

I think that what Vectorworks is trying to achieve is a consistency of approach across all its Style objects. Currently, fields for style tools can be set to “By Instance” or “By Style“. 

It hopefully makes the program easier to learn if there is consistency because users who are unfamiliar with certain tools will know where and when to look for functionality that they may not necessarily know exists.

 

 

[SB Lighting]

Thanks for your quick responses Mark!

 

I'm curious about why you would use the style function for the situations you describe rather than using symbols.  To my thinking, if I had a set inventory of pipes then I'd want to use a style to keep the overall look of the pipes consistent and then use symbols for the different lengths or pipe. That way, if I had an installation where I wanted to say, use 25cm tick marks rather than 50cm tick marks, I could just change the style and adjust every pipe in the system while still using the same symbols I always use for different pipe lengths.  Otherwise, I'd have to individually re-style every pipe in the inventory to make that change.

 

The consistency of approach makes sense to me as an argument.  Though you could still have some attributes default to "on" or "off" without changing the consistency of having the "by instance" or "by style" options.  And it might make it easier for beginner users to go through fewer menus to get to what seems to me would be the most likely scenario.  Though, as you point out, it may only be the "most likely" from my point of view!