Position not unique error after export to APEX

[Pyro_50000]

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Had an interesting issue today, Position 13, Position 15, Position 133 and Position 153, gave me position not unique error when I loaded the exported file to APEX.  Does APEX not recognize or Finale not export three digit positions,  Issue went away when I renamed 133 to 37 and 153 to 57

[DrewFinale]

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Hi Pyro_50000, welcome to the Finale 3D forum!

 

Here’s the portion of the Apex documentation in the Finale 3D Help Center that explains how position names are handled:

 

The position names are limited to 6 characters, and must not include space, backslash, double quote, newline, tab, or comma. Finale 3D will automatically truncate positions names that are too long and if necessary add letters to make them unique, as in changing “ABCDEFGX” and “ABCDEFGY” and “BBCDEFG” to “ABCD~a” and “ABCD~b” and “BBCDEF”. Caliber strings are limited to 40 characters, though that usually isn’t an issue.

 

You mentioned that you originally had the following position names:

Position 13

Position 15

Position 133

Position 153

 

Since these position names all exceed 6 characters, Finale 3D should be truncating them and adding letters as follows:

Posi~a

Posi~b

Posi~c

Posi~d

 

Apex script files are text files with a .sho file extension. This means you can easily open and inspect the raw data in the script using a simple text editor like Notepad.

 

If you find that Finale 3D isn’t truncating position names as designed or see any other issues, send your Finale 3D show file (.fin file) and the corresponding Apex script (.sho file) to support@finale3d.com. We are happy to help troubleshoot the issue.

[Pyro_50000]

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Thanks Drew this makes prefect sense and just for clarity  The positions were labeled

POS-13

POS-15

 

added these positions with the Seven characters that caused the issues

POS-133

POS-153

 

 

Changed them to this and the issue went away

POS-37

POS-57

 

I must have forgot I had a six character limit, but now I know why.   Thanks for the fast replay.

 

George

 

 

[DrewFinale]

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Hi George,

 

Having positions with the following names should NOT cause any errors:

POS-13

POS-15

POS-133

POS-153

 

I just did a quick test and confirmed the Finale 3D truncates position names and makes them unique, as described in the Apex documentation.

 

I started by creating a simple show with just four positions and four events. For the position names, I used POS-13, POS-15, POS-133, and POS-153. Then I addressed the show for Apex and exported the script. In the exported script (.sho) file, the position names are listed as POS-~a, POS-~b, POS-~a, and POS-~b. If you’re using these exact same position names, then you should be getting the exact same (good) result. If not, there must be something more to the equation. Feel free to send your show file over if you’d like us to take a look.

 

Edit: Getting position names POS-~a, POS-~b and then POS-~a, POS-~b repeated again in the header of the script (.sho) file is NOT good. Finale 3D should be truncating the position names to 6 characters and making the unique, and it’s not doing that in this case.  Your solution of changing the position names is a good short-term workaround. As a long-term solution, we will investigate fixing the issue so that Finale 3D always provides unique, 6-character position names in the exported script file.

[Pyro_50000]

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I am getting the same POS-~a, POS-~b, POS-~a, and POS-~b. on Apex.  When I load the show file to Apex it tells me the show is not valid because I have two positions/groups that are the same ( POS-~a and POS-~a) and (POS-~b and POS-~b).  Then all the lines in the show file that have those positions are listed with an error.  Since the show has errors it is invalid and Apex does not allow you to shoot an invalid show.  I grabbed some screen shots and sent  it over to the support email address.  Again I was able to resolve the issue by renaming the seven character positions to a six character positions.  I also just renamed the positions as follows below and I got a valid show.  So it seems the first 6 characters just have to be unique

 

Pos-13

POS-133

Pos-15

POS-153

 

George

[DrewFinale]

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Hi George,

 

I just realized that in my test, the position names did not come out unique as they should have. Just like you, I got:

POS-~a

POS-~b

POS-~a     <— Duplicate

POS-~b     <— Duplicate

 

The correctly truncated and unique position names would be:

POS-~a

POS-~b

POS-~c

POS-~d

 

I edited my previous post as a correction. We’ll investigate and try to fix the issue.

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