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Rotation axis

Discussion in 'wysiwyg' started by David S. Perkins, Oct 24, 2017.

  1. David S. Perkins

    David S. Perkins New Member

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    Hello, I'm testing WYSIWYG by importing a show we already did in another visualizer. Liking it so far.
    One thing I'm having a hard time with.... is to rotate fixtures along the "depth" axis, or green. It seems that neither pan, spin, or tilt, or any combination allows me to adjust the angles. The fixtures we imported from an excel doc, so there's a bunch of solo pipes at each fixture. I can rotate these pipes in front view, but not very precisely. Any tips for that?
    wysiwyg screenshot with Work in progress, autocad screenshot shows correct orientation.
    These are out-rigged sideways from circle truss, with Whips Upstage....

    Any chance we can manually enter XYZ rotation of fixtures as if they are floating in mid air? I'll use geometry as my "hang position"

    Thanks!
     

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  2. Dany

    Dany Administrator
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    Hi David,

    Since you are just starting to use WYSIWYG, I strongly suggest working through the QuickStart Guide, in order to understand the software's basic paradigm/concepts regarding rotation and fixture hanging. The guide will also teach you how to perform precise rotations (i.e. by specifying the rotation angle). I am suggesting this instead of simply providing the answer to your questions once again because without understanding such basic concepts (or the proper use of WYSIWYG's functions/tools) it will be hard for you to evaluate the software properly. (The question I answered for you yesterday had a simple answer.. answering the above requires the explanations that are already available in the QuickStart Guide, which is installed together with WYSIWYG by default and accessible from the Windows Start menu (> All Programs) > CAST Software folder.)


    Hth,

    Dany
     
  3. David S. Perkins

    David S. Perkins New Member

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    Hello Dany,
    Thanks for referring me to the quick start guide. I read the manual through and missed the command line portion for precise input of angles and such.
    I do have a problem with my command line, it does not consistently capture keystrokes upon prompt by the tooltip. Any suggestions?
    Lastly, I have all these rotations in a table. I did not find anywhere in manual or quick start for entering numerical values in a table for this. I can do so for pan, tilt, and spin, but none of those rotate the fixture along the desired axis. Do you have any figures showing what pan/tilt and spin axis are?
    Thanks, and sorry to waste your time with RTFM kind of requests. I've asked for one on one training from CAST because we have a very unique use case/workflow. I am waiting to hear back on that.

    -David S. Perkins
    Visualization Specialist
    VER
     
  4. Floriaan

    Floriaan Well-Known Member

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    Looks like circular array is what you are looking for. Then you could auto-rotate all elements so they appear as on your example.
    I agree that the manual is maybe up for an overhaul. It does explain all the functions, but could elaborate on workflow and on why you would require certain actions. A short training session is what got me started 15 years ago!
     
  5. Dany

    Dany Administrator
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    :)Hi David,

    No worries about anything.. sorry it took me so long to come back to you.

    Honestly, no, I'm so sorry.. nothing like this has ever been reported--or not in the past nearly 15 years since I've been supporting WYSIWYG. Perhaps you are expecting it to work for functions which do not depend on Command Line input? Many of WYSIWYG's functions do not, but it should always work for inserting objects (drawn or selected from the Library), for drawing (most objects, in Interactive mode), for Moving, for Rotating, to establish Mirror lines (but that would be strange to do), for Arraying (to set a precise Linear Array angle), etc. If you can tell me where you are experiencing this issue, I would be happy to look into it more.


    There is unfortunately no way to specify the rotations you are looking for while you import Blocks from a CAD file and replace them with fixtures from WYSIWYG's Library. Furthermore, due to a deficiency which we are hoping to address soon, the import function does not interpret Blocks' rotation angles when this is done, so fixtures added to a file in this way will always hang at their default Pan, Tilt and Spin angles, which are 0, 0 and 0.

    In addition to this, as you know, in order for a fixture to exist in a WYSIWYG file, it must hang from a hang structure (i.e. Pipe, Truss, etc.). Since no such relationship must exist in a CAD file (AutoCAD does not distinguish between a Block that represents a fixture and one that represents anything else) when importing a CAD file and "converting" Blocks into fixtures, those fixtures must hang from something, and, for the time being, all that WYSIWYG can do in order for the conversion to work, is hang each fixture that "came from a Block" onto its own one-meter-long pipe. We realize that this is not ideal, so we are definitely planning to make WYSIWYG "smarter" by getting it to detect when a number of "fixture Blocks" appear "in a row" and, as a result, assume that they are supposed to hang from the same hang structure, and therefore draw a single pipe from which to hang all those Fixtures once the import is complete. However, this is not a feature that will be available in the upcoming R40.


    All that said, and to address your particular situation here (based on the screenshots that you attached to your message) what you need to do (given WYSIWYG's current import capabilities) is Rotate each pipe that each fixture hangs from the appropriate number of degrees. Unfortunately, this is a fully-manual process of selecting the Pipe, activating Rotate, pressing <enter> to set the Pipe's Midpoint as the point around which to Rotate it, entering the number of degrees to Rotate it by, and then pressing <enter> once more... and repeating this for every Pipe/Fixture that you imported, because WYSIWYG does not have an "Incremental Rotation" function. (A "Rotate in Place" function is available in the Edit menu, but this is used to rotate two or more objects (not Fixtures, except Fixtures that have been Inserted on the Floor) by the same number of degrees.)

    Alternately, as per Floriaan's suggestion below, you could use Polar Array to recreate that circle. To do that, you would, in a nutshell:

    - determine where the centre of the circle is and draw a Point at that location
    - delete all but one Pipe-Fixture "set"
    - select that "set"
    - Polar-Array it around the centre Point from the first step above a full 360ยบ with the "Rotate object" option enabled


    All that said though, you really do not need the Pipes to be rotated as such in order to orient the fixtures such that they appear as in your CAD file (and function correctly when "driven" via the Focus Designer tool or via live DMX), as you will see in my next paragraph.


    Yes: fixtures' Pan, Tilt and Spin angles are displayed in their Properties (> Fixture tab > General subtab), as well as in DATA mode, in the columns by the same name (which are typically tucked away on the right side of the Spreadsheet, out of view unless you scroll over to them). Since changing these values from here WILL change the fixtures' focus/orientation (in the plot/model) you should be able to copy the rotation values from the table you mentioned, and, as long as the fixtures are sorted in the correct order in the Spreadsheet, paste them into their Pan cells, in order to get them oriented correctly.


    No worries, Dave. What you asked here is by no means a "basic"/"beginner" question (as is obvious by the length and complexity of my answer :)). ... But it does illustrate, I believe, what I meant earlier when I mentioned that it is important to understand WYSIWYG's basic usage concepts/paradigm: if I had simply answered your last question with the previous paragraph (which starts with "Yes: fixtures' Pan, Tilt and Spin...") you would have had the solution for how to solve the issue at hand, but not necessarily an understanding of why it needs to be solved that way or why it even needs to be done at all--why it cannot be done during import. I can only hope that my description of the import process (and its current deficiencies) and my explanation of the special Fixture-Hang Structure relationship has provided enough background for you to understand all this, and that, as a result, you now understand our software's capabilities.

    Naturally though, if you have any more questions about any of this, please don't hesitate to ask. I will inquire about the training you requested and let you know what's going on with that via email.

    All the best for now,

    Dany
     
  6. Dany

    Dany Administrator
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    Heh.. well, it looks like I was wrong about WYSIWYG's ComEdit bar's ability to always capture keystrokes... while it is true that no one but you actually reported this, the bug was found through internal testing back in September, and fixed almost immediately. Unfortunately, it was too late to add the fix to the R39 Update, but it will be there in R40.
     
  7. Martinus Magneson

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    I was looking at issues along this line yesterday. Turned out the rotation (pan in gen opt) is not reflected in CAD view. It will be correct in live views though if that helps.
     
  8. Dany

    Dany Administrator
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    Hi Martinus,

    What you noticed is completely unrelated to this thread/topic. I hid your post, and asked in a private message if you would be kind enough to start a new thread/topic, where I can comment on your observation and provide information about it; this way, others who search for it can find it easily (which may prove difficult if it is buried at the bottom of an unrelated thread). I'm not sure if you didn't want to do that, but anyway I did this just now. http://forums.cast-soft.com/index.p...t-appear-are-not-reflected-in-wireframes.770/


    Cheers,

    Dany
     
  9. Martinus Magneson

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    Hi Dany

    I saw the alert after posting again, I thought I hadn't poseted it yesterday when I originally did. Don't know if it's me or the forum that's wonky.
     
  10. Dany

    Dany Administrator
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    Ah, don't worry about it, Martinus! :)
     

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