Original LXSeries Forum

Hi,

I have recently created a plot using LX Beams and I am loving it! However, I cannot seem to be able to figure out how to make a report sort the positions alphabetically. Any suggestions?

Admin might have a better way but try this: View / Report / Create Report / Positions. Drag the positions into the order that you want - I usually do FOH to upstage. The order of positions is otherwise the order in which you draw them.

Just a note to the above: The positions report shows the positions in the current layer. The overall sorting order is also determined by the order of the layers if there are positions on more than one layer.

There are some items in the arrange menu that also deal with the drawing order. One related to sorting is the "Send Positions to Back" command which puts all positions in the current layer at the bottom of the drawing order.

The other is the "Auto-arrange" command which puts the positions at the bottom and also sorts the drawing order of the lights into instrument schedule order. This is useful because the Select->Next Object and Select->Last Object commands allow you to move through a drawing. When the lights' drawing order is sorted, these commands allow you to step through the lights along a position.

Okay, this is fabulous! It's looking much better now.

Next thing. How do I get reports to show only full positions on a page? (eg rather than starting the 1st electric at the end of one page and splitting it onto 2 pages, make it skip to the next page to start the 1st electric)

The latest version of LXBeams has a report option "Page Break Every Division". This is not a very green option as it may waste a lot of paper...

For the next version after 2.0 is released, there may be a better way to add control for page breaks that does what you want but gives more fine-grained ability to place them.

(Update) The latest build, v1.9.28 has some additional page break capabilities:

You can insert a Page Break after any selected data row in a list report. Page breaks keep their row positions when a report is resorted. So, you may need to remove the page break if lights are added or removed from the report. Page breaks do not function if they are inserted after a header or blank row.

I have a strange phenomenon going on in my positions report.

I can change order on some posititions but not all.

When I stumble upon a position that refuses to be moved it also at the very same instant becomes invisible in my plot.

I dont know if it has anything to do with a possible explanation but it seems to happen to positions whos names are just numbers, not the ones with full names like "FoH1" etc.

I first stumbled upon this with a pipe called 01. I managed to move it once but then pipe 34 refused (and became invisible) and I had to revert again.

No it has nothing to do with numeric names.
Some testing shows that its the tenth position in order which creates the problem.

No matter what I try to put after the ninth and before the eleventh position immediately becomes invisible!

Kind of strange but OK, now I can work around it.

Haven't been able to duplicate this. What version are you running? (And what version of OS X?)

When a position disappears, can you look in the Console to see if there is a message? (Applications->Utilities->Console.app)

What happens is that a dragged position is taken out of the layer and then put back in a new location. The only possible issue I can see is a Range exception that prevents the position form being put back. I don't see how the drop location could be outside the possible values. But, it is in the realm of the possible that this is what is happening. Seeing the range exception in the console would confirm it.

Update:

This problem seems to be caused by positions that are inside of groups.

The issue should be fixed in 1.9.29 (5803) available as the latest build.

Thanks to Johan.

Sounds like a credible explanation.
When I stumbled upon this all my positions 1-9 were trusses packed together as groups in the plot.

Unbelievable that you figured that out! I never thought of it...

I started putting fixtures on my positions before turning of the auto numbering feature. I then went through and numbered my fixtures manually (it is a grid and each bar in the grid wants to have a number 1 when auto numbered).

The plot looks great and is numbered the way I want it. However, the Instrument Schedule report will not sort by instrument number. Fixture #48 shows up first in the list for "Grid" position because it was the first fixture I put on the plot. Is this related to some issue about the Instrument Number field not actually being a number but text?

Instrument numbers are expected to be numbers. Channels and dimmers are also this way. LXSeries recognizes a single alphabetic character 1a, 1b, 1c in any of these fields. However, the '#' in the number field will cause sorting to be by drawing order. It is possible a future update may detect and ignore a leading '#' but that is not the way it currently works.

The latest builds of LXFree and LXBeams (6906) ignore a leading pound sign when interpreting unit numbers.

These builds also add a format preference that automatically adds a pound sign to auto-number and auto-fill generated unit numbers.

admin wrote:The latest builds of LXFree and LXBeams (6906) ignore a leading pound sign when interpreting unit numbers.

These builds also add a format preference that automatically adds a pound sign to auto-number and auto-fill generated unit numbers.

Woohoo! Wonderful! That worked like a charm!

Thanks so much!