(VB.NET) My View - 2D Real-time visualizer and magic sheet

[RobertBell]

My View can be used as an alternate display on the console or remotely on a laptop on the network. It offers a friendlier graphical interface that is completely customizable and provides real-time feedback on what is happening in your rig. Lighting designers often build paper ‘magic sheets’ to separate their rig into tidy squares of different purposes. Horizon (the PC based control sold by Rosco and developed by the Palette software team) had a feature called “Active Magic Sheets” (tm) where users could build HTML documents that would have hyperlinks that could ask the desk to select fixtures. My View takes that concept full circle by then showing you the result of those edits and of running cues. Think of it as a 2D-Bi-Directional visualizer.
Here is an example of a smaller rig with some callouts showing you what the symbols mean.

My View.jpg (137.84 KiB) Viewed 6190 times

After running the application you need to ‘steal’ the patch from the console. Do this by choosing FILE|POPULATE. The grid will be filled with one object for each of your fixtures.

Populated.jpg (131.47 KiB) Viewed 6191 times

Those that are moving lights will get a little blue triangle showing you where the light is pointed (and if it’s in its home position, it will have a blue circle around the fixture number). As you pan and tilt this fixture on the desk, the arrow will point to where the light is pointing. Right-click options allow you to offset the pan angle or invert pan if need be to match the real lights. If cues are running, you will set the current state of the world in real-time. (There is no edit vs. run-time mode – it’s hot all the time).
After populating the grid, you can SHIFT-CLICK and drag the objects to where you want on them in your view. Typically, you will first draw GROUP BOXES using the INSERT MENU.

Group Box DB.jpg (41.22 KiB) Viewed 6188 times

After placing a box, you can SHIFT-CLICK the text to move it and the lower right hand corner allows you to size it. Before adding many boxes, I normally go into the FILE|MANAGE dialog box and uncheck the whole rig.

Manage DB.jpg (73.67 KiB) Viewed 6188 times

Then I check off one fixture, close the dialog box and manually place it in the desired location. Then I enter the Manage dialog box again and click off subsequent fixtures. They will automatically get placed next to the fixture with the next lowest number that has already been placed. Continue doing this until your magic sheet is complete. Keep in mind, there is no need to have the entire rig in the view, but keep in mind that the database is a living copy of the Palette Patch. If you add or delete fixtures in the Palette software, they will appear or disappear automagically in My View.

Here is a picture of the Options dialog box:

Options DB.jpg (45.35 KiB) Viewed 6189 times

To date, this is the largest Open Source project we’ve posted. It is still a work in progress and will be for some time, but less and less so with your assistance.
To do (shortcomings)

• Drag and drop sucks! We need ghost image of dragging objects
• Right-click DELETE and PROPERTIES box for group boxes
• Right Click STORE SELECTION SET for group boxes to store the current selection set and send it to the console upon subsequent clicking’s
• Simple Text Labels and Line objects
• Add properties to fixture to show/hide palette names and/or draw borders around fixtures objects
• Need to deal with huge rigs with long palette name text. Lua script at engine end is timing out. Need partitioning when return string gets too long

[RobertBell]

This version of the exe will work on 10.3.20. To make it work, I made this change to form1.vb

Code: Select all

' Const QueryString As String = "print(HC.GetCommandLineText() .. '\1' .. HC.GetCurrentSelectionSet() .. '\1' .. HC.AttributeGetValue('1/5000', 'Number', 'Intensity+VS', 'Position+LVS', 'Color Mix+LVS'))"
Const QueryString As String = "print('Command Line Text*' .. '\1' .. HC.GetCurrentSelectionSet() .. '\1' .. HC.AttributeGetValue('1/5000', 'Number', 'Intensity+VS', 'Position+LVS', 'Color Mix+LVS'))"

[fredthe]

I've been playing with the visualizer a bit... although it works fine running on the console, it seems to have problems when running on a seperate computer, and the console is not at the default address of 192.168.0.99.

From looking at the code, it looks like the problem is that the options dialog uses form1.ConnectToHost() to verify host connectivity before updating the registry with the new console IP address... good in theory, but ConnectToHost() checks connectivity to the old (registry) address, which will, of course fail.

I'd fix this, but I don't have VB. Could comeone please fix this?
(Or, is it really not borken, and I've got something else wrong?0

Thanks,
Fred

[amoyer]

When we first got out console I had this running on a laptop without any problems. I had to change the IP address but I don't remember having any difficulty with that.

[RobertBell]

Try deleting the registry entry. Then it can't check. (I think I've done this in the past - It's true it needs fixing)

[tom]

I like this one alot but unfortunantly it won't let me save my layout.
It throws up an error message when I try to save.

Method not found.

[RobertBell]

Hmmm. Couldn't convince you to d/l VB.Net Express edition and run it from code, could we. Then we'd get a line number.
Aside from that - is there anything special about your layout? Did you have a lot of boxes or text, or did you just re-arrange fixtures and try to save. Does it save if you just Populate and Save? Could it be a mapped network drive thing? Do you get the SAVE AS dialog box?

[fredthe]

Well, I finally got it working external to my console (had to manually add the regestry entry), but now I also have the problem of being unable to save...
It's the same running on the console or external, with only just the initial populating from the console, and both Save and Save As have the same effect... it looks like the error occurs when it tries to do OpenFileDialog1, as the dialog box never appears, and it gives some sort of unhandled execption error. Is the Open File dialog perhaps part of some other .net package that needs installing?

I may load VB.net express next week and see if that helps. (If I can get that particular computer on the school's network, which is a problem in itself)

-Fred

[RobertBell]

You may need .net framework 3.5
This is what it is doing if you want to figure out how far it is getting.

Code: Select all

    Private Sub SaveAsToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles SaveAsToolStripMenuItem.Click
        If Me.Panel1.Controls.Count < 1 Then
            MsgBox("Nothing to write")
            Exit Sub
        End If
        With OpenFileDialog1
            .AddExtension = True
            .DefaultExt = ".myv"
            .CheckFileExists = False
            .CheckPathExists = True
            .AutoUpgradeEnabled = True
            .FileName = ""
            .Filter = "My View Files (*.myv)|.myv"
            .Multiselect = False
            .Title = "Save As..."
        End With
        If OpenFileDialog1.ShowDialog = Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK Then
            CurrentFileName = OpenFileDialog1.FileName
            FileSave()
        End If
    End Sub

[tom]

framework 3.5, check.

Problem solved.

Now if only i could install that on the palette itself.

I reckon to use this, i could probably do most of the stuff offline, but it would be nice to be able to fine tune on the work floor.