Two comments:   1) I built out a “Community Library” Google Sheets document last year, but it fell by the wayside with other priorities. I’d be willing to give ownership to a set of others if there’s interest in trying to maintain it.  Maybe I was too ambitious about the goal of tracking more metadata than VDL. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tsA5V5laZCikZh0EsxEjJMLMiOl1NZ9eaapP13lCIlg/edit?usp=sharing   2) Could we get a poll setup about which product catalogs users want prioritized for Cake/VDL creation?  I saw some debate in the Nov 2023 Cakes thread on this as well. I think there’s regional preference for sure, but have no clue how it shakes out across the entire user base.  Brothers cakes are very popular (available?) in the WI area.  

Can we split the syncing of My Effects from all the other network operations that happen when we “Sync with Network”?  99% of the time, I just want to save My Effects to the cloud and move on. The extra time rechecking all the inventory catalogs I subscribed to is unnecessary and slows me down. It could save a bit of traffic to your servers too!.  Just something like “Save My Effects”.

Can we get an enhancement to suppress the “Success!” window that pops up after every effect edited? I don’t recall ever seeing an error, but even if there is something that could wrong, I’d suggest the UI should only show when this exception state happens.  Otherwise, it’s just another dialog box I’m regularly dismissing and not reading.

I noticed something this year that I didn’t see last year related to sequences. When I select many individual effects in my timeline and try to sequence them (hotkey H), I find that my last effects are sometimes shuffled into the middle of the string of other effects. This is the primary way I would make my cakes in the past with individual effects and then to get the timing right, select the various groups I built and set the time.  I can get something close by using the stretch duration option, but why is sequencing changing the order of my effects?   it’s not super obvious here, but in the before, effect 22 becomes effect 16 after sequencing.  Is this in some way expected?   I do have a fin file that shows         

That all makes sense, thanks!   It would be cool to have the ‘by position’ option later, glad it’s at least a reasonable idea 🙂   J

Cool, thanks!  Easy enough to understand the data field

Hey NEC, the “Hazard” column values have to be set in the script window. You can also populate the “Hazard Default” column in the effects window. If an effect contains a default hazard value before it’s added to the show, the hazard value will automatically be added to the script. The “Hazard Default” column in the effects window isn’t linked to the “Hazard” column in the script to give you line-by-line control over each script row. For example, this allows you to have 3″ salutes on position A with a different Hazard value than 3″ salutes of the same part number on position B. If the hazard columns were linked, all 3″ salutes of the same part number would have the same hazard value. If you’re not taking advantage of default Hazard values for your effects, you may want to check that out.   There’s not currently a way to set a hazard default on a per- rack or per-position basis. It’s a neat idea tough and might be an enhancement we can make in the future.

Hey NEC, no problem, “Physical Specifications” is a column that you can unhide in the effects window from the blue gear ⚙️ icon. To learn the syntax for the column, try setting the physical specifications for an item using the dialog, then compare the values you entered to the text that’s generated and added to the Physical Specifications column.

Hey Curtis B, if your cake can be represented by one of the standard Firing patterns for cake and slice rows, then yes, it can absolutely be converted. You mentioned create a cake from cakes, this caught my eye. Creating a cake by combining other cakes can give you bad results. I don’t recommend it and I can’t think of a reason it should be necessary.   It should always be possible arrange the individual shots for a cake on the timeline and then do ‘Combine as cake…’. If the cake combiner can’t match the firing pattern on the timeline to one of the standard firing patterns, it will fall back to the exact syntax. In most cases, the cake combiner should give you ideal VDL. In rare cases, you might be able to do better by handwriting the VDL.   To try and convert your cake to use a standard firing pattern, I would break it apart into single shots, then try recombining it. If the cake combiner can figure out how to represent the cake without the exact syntax, then the only option is to hand write the VDL.

Hey DrewFinale I’m not able to recreate the bug anymore… not sure how I created it in the first place but it isn’t wanting to happen again. It may have been a previous version and once I updated the bug disappeared. Thanks!