That explains it.  I did address this particular show manually.  Thanks for the help.

Hello, all! My name is Jason. I am just getting into pyromusicals for my personal family shows. I am looking forward to learning so much more about the world of pyrotechnics!

Hey Pyro_8630000, welcome to the Finale 3D forum! Be sure to head over to your My Profile page and update your display name and profile picture.   Finale 3D sorts rail and pin (i.e. module and cue) addresses as text because some firing systems use addresses that contain letters. To fix the issue you’re having, all you need to do is add a leading 0 to your single digit rail and pin numbers. For example, 01 instead of 1, 02 instead of 2, etc.   This is not a recent change; Finale 3D has always worked this way. If you open a previous show and it sorts correctly, it will be because it has the leading 0s. The fact that you bumped into this issue makes me think you’re addressing your show manually. If instead you address your show by going to Addressing > Address show, you will get leading 0s automatically.

Hello,   I am using the Lite version and have been for a few years.  This year I am noticing that the wiring script report doesn’t come up with the rail and cue numbers in order like it has in the past.  Now it shows all the cues in the order.  1,10,11,12,13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and then goes into 2, 20 and so on.  Looks like it is putting them in order with all the cues that start with 1 and then all that start with 2 and so on.  It is also doing the same with the rail numbers.  It starts at rail 1 and then 10 is next before showing rail 2.  Has anyone else run into this issue?  In the past is has always shown up in order from 1-32 for cues and 1 to however many rails there is in the show.  Thank you.    

Pyro_53580000 asked how to create a Jellyfish pattern shell — sharing the answer here so everyone can benefit. If you have another way of creating this kind of effect, reply and show us what you can do!   Example VDL for a Jellyfish pattern shell: 5″ Blue Peony Top Half w/ Sparse Bright Red Gold Palm Bottom Half w/ Silver Ring       If you want a very tight cluster of stars for the “tentacles”, more like the stem of a mushroom, then you can use the VDL term Ear instead of Bottom Half. Just keep in mind, if you go this route, you’ll have to change the ‘pitch’ of the Ear break to 90° in the effect editor to get the right alignment.   Example VDL for a Mushroom pattern shell: 5″ Blue Peony Top Half w/ Sparse Bright Red Gold Palm Ear w/ Silver Ring (with effect editor ‘pitch’ adjustment)       Tip: If you want to be able to easily make changes to the effect later, such as changing the size, color, or anything else, it will be easier if you stick with a “pure VDL” effect instead of using the effect editor. Once an effect is customized in the effect editor, the only way to make other changes are to go back into the effect editor.

Expected behaviour.  the “sequence gap” is based on 1st effect time.  Since the group you have is longer than your sequence interval the overlap happened.  You’ll have to manually position that final effect

Perhaps a better example is to hit ‘S” and select Left to Right as the sort order. I would have thought this would keep the order of my effects in the sequence, but as you can see, my last group of ‘finale’ shells in the cake are shift so they are no longer last in the timeline.     afterwards, my last group of five shells are shifted into the middle of the cake  

The option to choose the distance between positions, instead of the whole lenght when arranging multiple positions.

Hey Curtis B, nicely done. The video is easy to follow and now I understand the issue perfectly. For better or worse, everything is working as designed. The key moment in your video is at 2:11 when you replace the first effect you created with the cake effect. If you look at the Pan column before you do the replacement, you’ll see the pan angle is 90. If you look at the pan angle after you do the replacement, you’ll see the pan angle is still 90. Non-cake items are automatically inserted with a pan of 90 because this allows ‘Tilt’ to be left and right (which is the most common way of angling an effect). It’s not the VDL that’s causing your cake to get a pan of 90, it’s simply that you’re replacing another effect that already has a pan of 90. The replace function simply doesn’t change the angles. You could certainly argue that pan 90 should be removed when a different type of item is replaced with a cake. That might be a good improvement, we’d just have to think through all the replacement scenarios to make sure that was a net positive change.   P.S. Loom (loom.com) is great free tool I use for sharing screen recordings up to 5 minutes. One thing that makes it awesome is that the videos are published in real-time, and you instantly have a sharable link.

DrewFinale I was able to recreate it… TWICE!   The first time I didn’t record properly so I had to try again and was able to recreate it again. Not sure what’s going on or why it is happening…