Racking issue

[Phil (Fire In the Sky Pyrotechnics)]

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I have a quandary about racking in Pro and it probably applys to hobbyist as well.  Some background…

 

I have 5 rack elements in my effects window

1 is a 9 shot straight up only rack that accommodates 1.75″ OD canister shells there is only 1 of these.

1 is a 10-shot straight rack that can be tilted to any angle that accommodates 1.75″ OD canister shells there are 10 of these

1 is a 25-shot mortar cake rack that can only be shot straight up and accommodates 1.75″ canister shells there are 4 of these

1 is a 18-shot fully adjustable metal mania rack that accommodates single_shots of sizes up to 60mm there are 3 of these

 

I have the following values for the racks in the Effects Window

Part #                Description                                                                              Size   Type   Rack Type Default
HB09S              9 individual tubes (straight up only)                                         1.75″  rack    indv
HB10S             10 HDPE DR-11 tubes (straight up but rack can be tilted)       1.75″  rack    mortar
HB25C             25 HDPE DR-11 tubes (straight up only) (milk crate rack)       1.75″  rack    mrc
MM01              18 holders single shot fully adjustable up to 60mm                   —      rack    single_shot
RACK-Fan-D   Fan Rack (Dummy actually use stakes)                                    —      rack    fan
For some reason two of my positions (that should rack to HB10S) don’t receive any racks.  Also the effects at those positions don’t get racked.    I have verified all the effects at those positions have the same angles, the same Rack Type value of ‘mortar’ and all are the same size 1.75″.  I can’t figure for the life of me why I am not getting racks at those two positions.  The strange thing is that a third position with the same types of effects racks to two HB10S racks one straight up |0 and one -10 with no issues.  I have looked at the scripts window and for the three positions all the effects have the same type, Rack Type and size.  Some of the effects that rack on the one position don’t rack to the other two for the same effect.

 

I’m somewhat bewildered now.  If you need the finale file for investigation I can provide a copy of it, if you have a location to upload it.

[DrewFinale]

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Hi Phil, great question, thanks for posting. The verification you did to make sure that your effects match your racks based on Size, Type, Rack Type, and Angle is exactly the right approach. Since nothing obvious is jumping out, I would recommend dropping a shell in a rack and then having Finale 3D tell you what the issue is, here are the steps:

 

1) Open the Racks window and select a position that’s not getting racks

2) In the Effects window, click on the icon for the rack you want to use to manually add a rack to the position

 

The next step depends on whether or not the items at the position have already been addressed:

 

3) If the effects at the position have already been addressed, click ‘Drag & drop pins’ in the upper left corner of the Racks window, then click on one of the pin numbers in the rail in the lower left and drag the effect into the rack.

 

OR

 

3) If the effects at the position haven’t been addressed, click on one of the red circles on the right side of the Racks window and drag the effect into the rack.

 

If the effect isn’t compatible with the rack for any reason, it will be highlighted in red.

 

4) Right click on the red highlighted effect and select ‘Why is this tube red?’

 

Finale 3D will pop up a dialog that tells you exactly why the effect isn’t compatible with rack. For more details, check out the full list of reasons effects may not be compatible here: https://finale3d.com/documentation/why-is-this-tube-red

 

Let me know if this helps you fix the issue. If not, send your show file to support@finale3d.com.

 

[Phil (Fire In the Sky Pyrotechnics)]

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Thanks for the pointer Drew,  I found the issue in that some of the effects had gotten a 90 degree pan on them and were thus not meeting the criteria for Pan, Tilt and Spin.  I was able to correct the effects and was able to generate correct rack numbers and locations (although I found it easier to create a Dummy rack for the Cakes like I did for the fan/slices just so everything racks) except the ground effects.  Now the only issue is that the angle display on the rack doesn’t display.  If I hover over the effects in the rack they show the correct angle but the rack itself doesn’t.  One of the things I had to change in the rack definition was to say the rack was fully adjustable instead of fixed angle (even though the physical rack is straight up and the whole thing can be angled as needed).  With fixed angle definition the angled effects were not being racked.

[DrewFinale]

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Hi Phil, it’s great to hear you were able to sort out the first issue with Pan angles. For the second issue, if your physical rack is normally straight-up, and the entire rack can be angled, then selecting a fixed-angle structure is correct. With fixed-angle racks, Finale 3D will denote the angle above the rack on the diagram. For racks with fully adjustable tube angles, the angle isn’t shown because the assumption is that the rack is sitting flat on the ground and the tubes within the rack are being angled. If you can’t get effects to rack with a fixed angle rack structure, something isn’t quite working right. With fixed angle racks, the ‘Add racks for show’ feature should automatically add racks to each position at the angles that match your design. If it’s not working that way, send over a simplified version of your show that reproduces the issue and I’ll take a look. For example, if the issue can be reproduced with a single position, a single rack, and a single angled effect, then that’s the ideal show file to send over. We call this a Minimal Test Case, or MTC for short. The process of deleting everything else in your show to create the MTC may even help you to find the issue.

[Phil (Fire In the Sky Pyrotechnics)]

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Hello again Drew.  I have worked out the issues with most of my racking.  Rather than CUT out a bunch of what I might thing is irrelevant, I just created a test bed to try things out in.  I think the racks are being generated correctly now, but I am working through things with the test bed.  Trying to get chains to rack to the same rack during addressing.

[DrewFinale]

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Phil (Fire In the Sky Pyrotechnics) wrote:

…Trying to get chains to rack to the same rack during addressing.

 

Check out Preventing chains from splitting across racks.

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