Reusing a Vectorworks 2012 Plot

[emac]

Hey Everybody,


I am reusing a plot that was designed by somebody other then me (with their permission). We don't have enough dark days in the season (or any actually) to rehang for the next show. So instead I will just be making small modifications to said plot, the biggest of which being a new patch in the board. I made a new channel hook up in excel and now I want to transfer that to the plot. I exported all the instrument data from vectorworks as a .txt file, opened it in excel, made all channel modifications that I needed to make, and then had vectorworks import the file. Now the correct data shows up in the Obj Info Palette but the old info is still shown on the plot itself, if I go to Spotlight > Refresh Instruments, all the instruments turn into rectangles with NO information attached to them and they do not resemble the instrument models that they used to. Any ideas as to what I am doing wrong?


Thanks

 

[joeb]

When you exported the data initially, did you export all of the fields, or just the ones you planned on changing - circuit, channel, etc.? If you only exported that info and not instrument type, etc., when you imported the new data, all of that information might now be blank. Just a thought. If that is the case, you can export the old info again, copy and paste the channel info into the new spreadsheet and then reimport it. Hope this helps.

 

[SteveB]

Hopefully you have a saved copy of the plot.

The rectangles indicate that the instrument symbol reference has been lost - I.E. an S4 no longer "knows" that the VW symbol is supposed to be an S4. Probably an import field that had null data and that cleared the symbol reference. You can see this in the OIB.

Easiest fix would be to change the import map so that you are not importing bad data into that field. Or you can do a Find and Modify for every instrument and change the instrument type.

As joeb posted, only import the data you need.

 

[emac]

Thanks everybody!

I was pretty sure that losing the instrument files was the cause. I will probably just do a fond and replace, to save having to remake changes to the plot.

Now for the future; I originally tried JUST importing dimmer and channel data into vectorworks (now that I think about it I did not how ever try to export just the dimmer and channel data, making modifications and then re importing that file....), but when ever I did that the data would not link up to fixtures. Which I figured was because there is no "fixture I.D." info attached, so what is the minimum amount of info that I need to export in order to not mess up the plot, BUT have the fixtures link themselves again?

Thanks a ton!!!

 

[icewolf08]

In the future, since you just ended up taking the paperwork into Excel, Vectorworks has built in paperwork generation and you could probably have made any of the changes you needed to there. Would have saved the headache. I don't remember exactly where it is, since I use lightwright, but it is there.


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[SteveB]

I have never tried using Excel to do a hookup, having used Lightwright forever, so...

When I run an "Export Database" out of VW it seemingly does not use a Map to give you some selections as to what fields you are exporting. Ditto for the import.

If you do an "Export Instrument Data", you get the Lightwright dialog box that allows you to choose what fields to export. Ditto on the "Import Instrument Data". Note that it's still a file that should be read by Excel and at that point I'd only be bringing in the data you need, plus the Unique ID, which is VW's identifier as to what symbol gets what data.

As well you can post this on the VW Forum for some specific advice - Vectorworks SPOTLIGHT - Vectorworks Community Board

The better solution though is Alex's, which is to learn to configure and use the built in paperwork as generated by VW. It cannot be any harder then configuring Excel to make the paperwork look the way you want and has the added advantage of automatic data updating.

The BEST solution is to use Lightwright. Has very good file integration, error checking, great color counting, etc.... It's all there built in.