Recent content by PMWest

I'm looking for advice on the best way for a lighting team to share and work on a show's files (Vectorworks and LW5) and have each member update them without ending up with conflicting data or multiple, inconsistent files. In this case, the files are distributed on Dropbox. The LD, ALD and ME...

SteveB, yes we did a bench focus after the lamp change, but it was a while ago. Maybe worth revisiting the units. And, avkid, this isn't an epidemic: 3 units out of 36. Just trying to prevent it from spreading further.

Recently we've encountered cracked inner lenses in some old Altman 360Q 6x9s. It might be a problem of too fast warm-up (the theatre is cold in the winter and some less-than-experienced technicians may have slammed them to full without pre-heat.) It might also be due to slightly hotter lamps...

It's also important to remember that prior to A Chorus Line much of the west side of Manhattan (and the theatre district) had only DC current - a result of the turf wars between Edison and Westinghouse - which made the use of SCR dimmers impossible. Broadway was stuck with the resistance-plate...

Speaking of antique equipment, is that second picture a Century Dimmy console, the successor to the late lamented Edkotron?

Icewolf is right about the Express trackpad "speed" settings, but I've found that the trackpad is one of the Express' weakest components. They tend to be erratic, or fail, especially on rental desks. When I modify channel levels on the fly I'll use the keypad "@ +" or "@-" keys to bump a channel...

Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, I imported the 12.5 label legends. I also tried re-assigning the label legend to all the instruments. Same problem. Then I looked on the NNA Spotlight forum and found an idea: VW has problems with some Windows font families. I checked the default text font...

I'm upgrading from VectorWorks 12.5 to 2009 on a Windows machine. When I open an old 12.5 drawing, and it gets converted from .mcd to .vwx, my instrument data display is unreadable. The data is correct but the information displays squares instead of letters/numbers. I've tried changing the...

Has anyone out there used Rosco's LPS for paperwork? Like most of you I use Lightwright and have it configured (automated) to import and export instrument data in and out of VectorWorks and AutoCAD. Since I jump back and forth between the drafting and paperwork programs many times during the...

Here's an odd one: We have a mixed rack of NSI dimmer packs: 2 NRD-9000s (8x 2.4KW), 2 NRD-8000s (8x1.2kW), and 4 NDS-12s (12x1.2kW). The NRD units run on Microplex control through an NSA DMX-MPX adaptor. The NDS units run DMX control. The whole thing is controlled by an ETC Express...

Hello, I'm a new member with a bad ETC dimmer. It's the standard D20 dual 20-amp module, one dimmer of which is stuck full-on, regardless of dmx signal. ETC says I can replace the whole module but since this is for a small non-profit company I'm looking for an inexpensive alternative...