It is obvious just from looking at them that racks with adjustable tube angles must not be configured with their tubes angling at each other. Since the addressing operation in Finale 3D assigns effects to rack tubes, it is the addressing operation itself that ultimately determines the angles of the tubes of adjustable angle racks, by virtue of the effect angles assigned to them. Thus, if you are using adjustable tube angle racks you must take care in the addressing operation to ensure the angles will not collide.
Figure 1 – Before and after rearrangement. The right image has no collisions (and a nice pin order).
If you check the “Rearrange effects in adjustable angle racks to avoid collisions” checkbox on the addressing dialog shown in Figure 2, then after the tubes are assigned in the original phase of the addressing operation, a second phase will rearrange the effects within each adjustable angle rack to avoid collisions. Since the rearrangements only occur within the confines of the racks, they will not violate any of the addressing constraints in the addressing dialog. For example, if you restrict racks to a single module, the rearrangements within any rack wouldn’t have any effect on that.
The rearrangement will take into consideration any tube angles or tube angle ranges that are set in the definition of the rack. For example, if you’ve defined a rack to have the rack structure “Single-shot rack, adjustable fan angles of tubes within each row”, and if you’ve specified some of the tube angles or tube angle ranges in the rows (see Tube angle range constraints), then the rearrangement will only move effects to tubes permitting the angles of the effects.
Figure 2 – The “Rearrange effects” checkbox is the easiest way to avoid collisions. Just check the box, that’s all you need to do.
Optimizations
In addition to eliminating tube collisions, which is a guarantee, the “Rearrange effects“ function renumbers the pins and optimizes the rearrangement for symmetry, balance, aesthetics, and ease of loading. These secondary optimizations are not guarantees but they are a nice fringe benefit of the function. The optimizations in order of priority are,
- No angle collisions or angle range violations
- No pin sequence gaps
- No shooting over empty holders
- Symmetry of angles and pins
- Balance
Referring back to Figure 1, the renumbered pin sequences work from the outside toward the center if the rack uses multiple modules.
Limitations
The “Rearrange effects“ option only works on non-cake racks of these three rack structures:
- Fully adjustable tube angles
- Tiltable row angles
- Fannable tube angles in each row
Additional limitations apply if the rack shares pins or modules with other racks, or if the rack contains locked addresses, or if the rack has a usable length limit on the rows, or rows with different numbers of tubes, or multiple tube sizes. The full list of limitations is in Table 1.
Please ensure that your racks are oriented in the layout in such a way that their tubes can be angled in the directions of the effects. Tiltable row racks need to be oriented with their rows vertical in the layout if the effect angles are side to side so the fans are perpendicular to the rows, to enable the rows to tilt for the fan angles. Fannable tube angle racks need to be oriented with their rows horizontal in the layout if the effects are side to side so the rows are parallel to the fans. Fully adjustable tube angle racks could be oriented with their rows vertical or horizontal for side to side effect angles, but if they have a usable length limit then they must be oriented with their rows horizontal because the usable length limit restricts the rearrangement to apply within each row instead of globally.
Table 1 – Limitations of rearrangement for racks based on their rack structure
| Rack structure | Locked effects or non-existent addresses | Shared pins w/ other cake racks | Usable length limit; multiple row sizes; or multiple tube sizes | Shared pins w/ other pre-wired pin racks or non-cake racks | Shared rails w/ other non-cake racks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single-shot rack, fully adjustable tube angles | EXCEPTIONS: locked effects neither moved nor renumbered | OK | REDUCED FUNCTIONALITY: rearranges within each row instead of globally; DISABLED if rows not parallel to fans | EXCEPTIONS: these effects can be moved but cannot be renumbered | EXCEPTIONS: avoids renumbering effects to pin numbers that are used in other non-cake racks |
| Single-shot rack, fannable tube angles in each row | EXCEPTIONS: locked effects neither moved nor renumbered | OK | REDUCED FUNCTIONALITY: rearranges within each row instead of globally; DISABLED if rows not parallel to fans | EXCEPTIONS: these effects can be moved but cannot be renumbered | EXCEPTIONS: avoids renumbering effects to pin numbers that are used in other non-cake racks |
| Single-shot rack, tiltable rows | DISABLED if any locked effects | OK | OK | EXCEPTIONS: these effects can be moved but cannot be renumbered | EXCEPTIONS: avoids renumbering effects to pin numbers that are used in other non-cake racks |
| Candle rack, fully adjustable tube angles | EXCEPTIONS: locked effects neither moved nor renumbered | OK | REDUCED FUNCTIONALITY: rearranges within each row instead of globally; DISABLED if rows not parallel to fans | EXCEPTIONS: these effects can be moved but cannot be renumbered | EXCEPTIONS: avoids renumbering effects to pin numbers that are used in other non-cake racks |
| Pre-wired single-shot rack, tiltable rows | DISABLED if any locked effects or any holders pre-wired to non-existent addresses, e.g., a 35 holder rack with a 32 pin module | OK | OK | DISABLED if any | DISABLED if any row contains empty holders pre-wired to pins that are used in other non-cake racks |
| Pre-wired single-shot rack, fannable tube angles in each row | DISABLED if any locked effects | DISABLED if any | REDUCED FUNCTIONALITY: rearranges within each row instead of globally; DISABLED if rows not parallel to fans | DISABLED if any | EXCEPTIONS: cannot move effects into empty holders pre-wired to pins that are used in other non-cake racks |
| Pre-wired single-shot rack, fully adjustable tube angles | DISABLED if any locked effects | DISABLED if any | REDUCED FUNCTIONALITY: rearranges within each row instead of globally; DISABLED if rows not parallel to fans | DISABLED if any | EXCEPTIONS: cannot move effects into empty holders pre-wired to pins that are used in other non-cake racks |
| Pre-wired candle rack, fully adjustable tube angles | DISABLED if any locked effects | DISABLED if any | REDUCED FUNCTIONALITY: rearranges within each row instead of globally; DISABLED if rows not parallel to fans | DISABLED if any | EXCEPTIONS: cannot move effects into empty holders pre-wired to pins that are used in other non-cake racks |
| Single-shot rack, fixed tube angles (pre-wired or not) | DISABLED | DISABLED | DISABLED | DISABLED | DISABLED |
| Single-shot rack, fully adjustable posts (all kinds, pre-wired or not) | DISABLED | DISABLED | DISABLED | DISABLED | DISABLED |
| Mortar rack (pre-wired or not) | DISABLED | DISABLED | DISABLED | DISABLED | DISABLED |
| Cake rack (all kinds, pre-wired or not) | DISABLED | DISABLED | DISABLED | DISABLED | DISABLED |
Loading order
Rearrangement obviously depends on what effects are in the rack, but it does not depend on their initial arrangement. The rack’s loading order determines which corner the pin number sequence starts with. If the rack uses multiple modules, the list is shown in the order the modules are encountered when traversing the tubes in the loading order.
Figure 3 – The two modules A0 and A1 used in this rack are listed with A0 first since it is the first to occur in the loading order.
The 30 tube rack in Figure 3 uses the first 15 pins of two modules. You can tell from the colors of the numbers that the pins in the upper left 0, 1, 2, … are associated with module A0, but if the colors are too close to tell apart you rely on the logic that the first module in the list (A0 in this case) is the first module encountered in the loading order.