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.

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

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.

It works now :) Thanks!

Hello, great news DrewFinale , AviatorRuss   I got it all sorted out! I would like to say thank you for the responses, they did lead me into the right direction!   My solution, was changing my addressing configuration to just Position Name > Event Time, but because I wanted all of my cakes to be on the same module, that is where I was running into issues. What I ended up doing was using the Custom Position Field constraint and labeling my cake line as custom positions!   I'm not sure if that was the easiest way of going about things, but that is what worked for me! Thank y'all again, Brownfield 4th of July will fly! (on the 3rd lol)

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    

Hey Barehm, ghosting aside, a shell with colored "bands", is currently beyond the capabilities of VDL. The primary limiting factor is that VDL simply doesn't have the necessary shell break pattern. The closest you can get with VDL at the moment is sweeping ghost using different colored shelf halves. Using quarters is also possible in VDL but the quarter patterns we have today represent radial quarters, like orange slices, not bands.   It's a little difficult for me to tell in the video, but it looks like to get a really good sim for this you would need a spherical pattern divided into five bands.   I recently made a custom 3D shell pattern to achieve something similar to this effect. I'll try to dig it and post it here.

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.

I'm happy to report that we just published a new BETA release of Finale 3D (2025.06.14-7563c981a) that resolves the 3D Google Maps issue. It turned out that Google made a change on their end that required us to do some modifications to Finale 3D.   Jakob Hatteland Kjemi AS Pyro_340560000 Cody Hanna

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