Now that the results are out and the 4 finalists have been chosen,congratulations to all of them!!!  Which email address can other competitors use if they would like to ask for feedback on their work? 🙂

¡Hola, Pirojor Fireworks Design!   Entiendo que puede ser algo complicado crear este tipo de efecto. Esto es lo que yo haría para este cake. (Nota: El truco es usar algo como “Silver Go Getter Horsetail” con otros términos de ajuste para lograr algo parecido al efecto de flying fish.)     20mm 19 Shot Cake (a) 1.5 LFT 0.85 DUR Very Big Slightly Ragged Very Short Trail Very Short Trail Very Short Trail Silver Go Getter Horsetail w/ Very Sparse Sparse Very Small Sparse Dim Red Ear + (b) 1.5 LFT 0.85 DUR Very Big Slightly Ragged Very Short Trail Very Short Trail Very Short Trail Silver Go Getter Horsetail w/ Very Sparse Sparse Very Small Sparse Dim Green Ear + (c) 1.5 LFT 0.85 DUR Very Big Slightly Ragged Very Short Trail Very Short Trail Very Short Trail Silver Go Getter Horsetail w/ Very Sparse Sparse Very Small Sparse Very Dim Blue Ear, 5 Rows, Rows 1,4 (1.49/abca/STR/4.45), Row 2 (1.49/bcab/STR/4.45), Row 3 (1.49/cabc/STR/4.45), Row 5 (1.49/bca/STR/0.15)     ¡Espero que te sirva!  

  JBlay312 wrote: Is that going to delay the selection announcement?   Yes, the fireworks accident did temporary delay the announcement of the finalists, but that delay is over and the announcement is coming very soon.

Is that going to delay the selection announcement?

Thanks for the report! We have reproduced the issue and expect to have it fixed in the next beta release. This bug was inadvertantly introduced when we made some improvements to other kinds of effects. We think it only applies to angles for effects that use motion paths (tourbillions, whirls, go-getters, whistles, etc.). A new beta release with the fix should be available this week. In the meantime, as a workaround, you can simply install the version you were running previously. You don’t need to uninstall the latest version or do anything special to go back to a previous version.

I recently updated to the newest version and now my fanned tourbillion (whirl) effects are way off. It is putting the whirls into a cluster instead of being fanned. No matter how much I specify the degree of the angles, like in a slice or fanned cake, it clusters them together. An example of this would be from the Dominator 1.4Pro catalog the PFC13FR-36 effect.

Hi Russ, let me first say, I love how you worked through this challenge, found a solution, and I especially appreciate you sharing your insights for anyone interested in learning from it.   You said a few times that the order in which the addressing algorithm chose to address and load something seemed random. I’d just like to say for anyone reading this that the order will only be random if the sort criteria doesn’t fully dictate a specific addressing order. What do I mean by that? Here’s an example: suppose you have a comet, a cake, and a shell all with the same event time. Then suppose you addressed your show by event time. Since all the event times are the same, the addressing algorithm will provide an unpredictable solution. When there’s nothing to break a tie, the result will essentially be random.   Why did the addressing algorithm load XYZ item into this rack and not some other rack? The addressing algorithm walks through the script events in the order you choose, and as it assigns a rail and a pin to an event, it looks for a compatible rack. If there are multiple compatible racks, it loads the item into the compatible rack with the lowest rack number.   There are two columns in the script that link the events/effects to racks. The columns are Rack and Tube. Even if the rack is a cake rack, the Rack and Tube columns in the script are still both used to link the cake effect to the rack. Yes, you can type in the Rack and Tube columns in the script to assign an event/effect to a rack. But, in the Pro version of Finale 3D, the addressing algorithm populates those columns, so if you don’t lock the address for that line of script, any values entered will be wiped and overwritten the next time the show is addressed.   Final note, the Racks window has a drag-and-drop feature that allows you to drag items from the ground, from a module, or from rack to rack. If you want a particular effect in a particular rack, you can just drag it into that rack.

Hey Curtis B, good idea. I’ll add it to the feature request list to keep it top of mind next time we’re working in this area.  

and last…to show how bad I am at racking…lol…I just stumbled upon the “Rack” column in the Script window. And…and…and…it looks like the EXACT thing i needed that would have saved me two days of struggling.   Someone please confirm for me, that you can type the rack# in the script window, and that will drive that specific effect into the specified rack# when racking/addressing?   I’m pretty sure it does. which fully answers the title of this thread. in one sentence…

….and…full disclosure…I AM NOT A RACKING/ADDRESSING GENIUS!   Someone will look at this and be like, hey, if you would have picked XYZA for your sort ordering, it would solved everything. AND, you’re probably right. I’m definitely a rookie with Racking and Addressing. I’m constrained by my on-hand numbers of modules, and racks, and I have to MAXIMIZE consuming all pins. I also use slats, so that everything is neatly pre-wired and then the only “wiring” that’s done on shoot day is to run the DB25 and cat5, and what’s left of the random cake ematching.   ALSO, I have a brand new APPRECIATION for the time it takes to answer questions and explain things in this forum! One simple question can take a lot of time to explain out with screenshots etc. Great job to the team that answers questions day in and out!   I hope this help someone, someday…   Cheers, -Russ