Include Hoist Weight with Hanging Position Weight

[jeff_farrow]

How can I include the weight of Hoists in my totals for Hanging Position weight?  I can see that the fixtures and truss are included, but not the hoists. If I "Select System Objects", the hoists are selected along with the fixtures and truss, so the relationship exists somewhere... Can I access this total?

[jcogdell]

At the moment this is not possible, as far as I know this is a limitation of the hanging position.
If you have Braceworks you can use the Braceworks Load Overview dialogue to provide this information
otherwise you will have to create a custom worksheet to get the total weight.

[Sam Jones]

If you are into a Braceworks workflow, and having Braceworks calculate loads I will leave you to it.  I don't use Braceworks; however, many of us want to get as much of the load information as possible just to keep us in the ball park.  The screen shot below shows a worksheet of all the selected devices below it.  Depending on the hanging position, to report the weights can be problematic unless everything has, or is, a Braceworks load.  The AutoPlot command ("Collect & Total Weight") used to generate the worksheet below queries the weight fields of the selected objects and lets you substitute your own weights if you desire.  Hanging positions of truss can be made up of 5 different kinds of VW constructions.

1. Truss created with the Straight Truss tool

2. Truss created with VW truss symbols

3. Truss created by grouping VW truss symbols

4. Truss created using VW Truss PIO objects

5. Truss created by grouping VW Truss PIO objects

How weight is collected from each of these is different.  It became a little simpler in 2022, but not much, and I didn't even include circular truss.  The command goes into a deep dive as to where to collect weight values in each case.  Then we have Hoists.  Legacy Hoists and the current VW version of hoists report weight differently, and of course you will want to decide whether or not you want to include chain weight, which you almost always will want to do.  The two versions of Hoist report chain weight differently.  Then we have the Video Screen object and the Blended screen object, and they report weight differently.  With the Video screen object you need to be given the choice of whether to use the screen weight or the projector weight.  Also, you should note that Lighting Devices do not report the weight of the accessories in the "Weight" field.  They do report the combined weight in a "Total Weight" field that is greyed out in the load information section.  You do not have access to that field in a worksheet, but it is possible to query the weight accessories in vectorscript which is what the command that makes the worksheet does.  This allows you to enter weights as needed, since the vast majority of accessory symbols have "0" in their weight field. 

 

If you care, there is more to collecting weight than just adding the hoist weight to the the hanging position total.  What is your workflow and how do you use weight?

AutoPlot "Truss Tags" will also try to decipher weight information, but that is another discussion.