Could DC attributes be "copied" into text entities via ruby?

[yan]

@gaieus said:

I've split these posts off the original topic - hopefully there will be ruby ideas here.

Hi everyone,

I'm quite new to SU and LO but after playing around a bit and trying out some ideas i ran in to an important question for me. I'm quite convinced that this is maybe not the best Forum to launch my question but i couldn't really find out where else. So i give it a go.

For my work as a light designer for theatre I often need 2D top views of my light plans with some information printed next to each lamp. I turned each lamp in to a unique Dynamic Component with several Attributes. These Attributes are things like channel number, color gel info, etc. I know that i can generate a cvs file to retrieve all this data, but my problem is that once i go with this plan to the theatre i need to have the channel number, the color gel number, etc printed next to each lamp on the 2D top view.

I'm really stuck with this beause an average light plan takes easily 100 lamps. Now i fill in all their attributes in SU so i can generate a spreadsheet for a material list. Then i export it to LO where i have to type the channel numbers and color filters next to each lamp. This is of course a very frustrating and inefficient way (to say the least). Given the fact that i often have to adapt the same light plan several times for different theaters it would be great if someone could show me the path towards enlightment... Is it Ruby?
I'm not a programmer but i checked already some Ruby scripts for some inspiration but until now i have the feeling no one is in need of something similar. Any tips or tricks are very welcome!

Thanks a lot

[Gaieus]

Hi Yan and welcome.

@yan said:

I'm quite convinced that this is maybe not the best Forum to launch my question but i couldn't really find out where else. So i give it a go.

dont worry, see what

@unknownuser said:

...Welcome to this forum for all your beginners questions. You may also have more advanced questions and may post them in the appropriate forum.
If you're not sure if your question is beginner or advanced, then don't worry too much. The world is full of worrisome people already and we want you to get that cozy - de-worried feeling here. So in that case just post it here anyway.

As for your question however... I'm afraid there aren't plugins for LO (yet) so there should be found some kind of workaround here. Since there may be (as you say) even hundreds of lights, simply exporting images of the attribute windows and placing them into LO as images wouldn't work either I believe.

Why are you actually using dynamic components for this? Is there a real advantage of them being dynamic?

[yan]

@gaieus said:

... As for your question however... I'm afraid there aren't plugins for LO (yet) so there should be found some kind of workaround here. Since there may be (as you say) even hundreds of lights, simply exporting images of the attribute windows and placing them into LO as images wouldn't work either I believe.

Indeed that would be a bit too much work but at the moment that is sort of what i do. (Re-typing them or copy/paste them, it both feels a bit dull)

@gaieus said:

Why are you actually using dynamic components for this? Is there a real advantage of them being dynamic?

Maybe i'm wrong on this but i thought that only dynamic components can have attributes and since i want to give each lamp a specific set of 'written' specifications i thought that that was my only way. It's true that my lamps are not 'dynamic' in the sense of a staircase or a wooden fence, and they don't have to be. So if there is another way to 'attach' attributes to a component then maybe that would be a thing to try. (I also want to generate a cvs where i can find all the components and their attributes, and again i thought that it needed to be dynamic components to do that).

At the moment most light and stage designers only want to use Vectorworks or Autocad because they offer of this kind of features. But i find all those applications in a way very 'closed' and user unfriendly that i want to stick to SU & LO and I hope to convince at least some of my collegues in the middle long run to do the same.
Thanks again for your reply and if there are more ideas for a workaround then that would be great.

[Gaieus]

Ah, the attribute report, true. That makes sense (sorry, stupid me). Maybe there could be done something (a plugin) in SU where these attributes would be "copied" into a text entity and connected to the individual lamps. But such an idea is the maximum I can come out with and I don't even know if it could really be written in ruby. Maybe you could try to post in the ruby forum (or I split your posts off and move hem there?)

[yan]

Hi Gaieus,

@gaieus said:

... Maybe there could be done something (a plugin) in SU where these attributes would be "copied" into a text entity and connected to the individual lamps. But such an idea is the maximum I can come out with and I don't even know if it could really be written in ruby.

That is exactly what i'm looking for. A script that copies the attributes to a text file (in SU) so i can recall that file in LO connected to each component.

@gaieus said:

... Maybe you could try to post in the ruby forum (or I split your posts off and move hem there?)

Sounds like a good idea! Can you split our thread about this and move it over to Ruby? Or do you prefer that i start a new thread in the Ruby forum myself?

Thanks again for your help and let's hope someone comes up with some ideas to create this script or plugin...

[Gaieus]

OK, done.
I've split these posts off the original topic - hopefully there will be ruby ideas here.