The Library: finding fixtures, truss and shapes
The Library holds everything you can put into a scene. The catalogues run to hundreds of parts, so it is built to be searched, not scrolled.
The Library sits in the right sidebar, in three tabs: Fixtures, Trusses and Primitives. Drag a card into the viewport to place it where you release it, or click it to place it on the default grid. Fixtures are patched and numbered as they land. To place several at once, right-click a fixture card; see Get fixtures into the scene.
Fixtures
Each card is one mode of a fixture, because the mode decides how many channels you patch. Right-click a card and choose Show all modes to see its siblings. The filters combine:
- Search
- Name, mode and manufacturer
- Category
- Conventionals, Moving Heads and the other categories the library holds
- Manufacturer
- Start typing a manufacturer, choose it or press Enter, and it is pinned as a tag. Several tags include any of them. The tag's × removes it
- Source
- All sources, GDTF or OFL. Every card carries a GDTF or OFL pill, taken from where the profile came from, not from whether it shipped or you imported it. A profile with no source recorded shows Unknown and appears under All sources only
- Show my fixtures
- Only what you and your organisation have imported
- Clear
- Resets every fixture filter, the source included
The same fixture can exist twice. A fixture that ships with the library and one you import are two cards with the same name: the shipped one, and yours with a dot in its corner. An upload never replaces a shipped profile, because that would silently change every rig already using it. Patching is where you choose. Yours is normally the one to pick, since a better file is usually why you imported it.
Re-uploading the same fixture refreshes its card rather than adding a third. The fixture library is shared, so somebody else uploading the same fixture refreshes the same card. A fixture from gdtf-share.com and the same fixture uploaded by hand stay separate cards.
A card shows a picture of the fixture's 3D body once one has been rendered. The first time a fixture is seen it may briefly show a glyph instead.
Searching GDTF Share
With a gdtf-share.com account connected (the GDTF Share button in the header), a fixture search also lists matches from GDTF Share, in a section From GDTF Share below your library. FlexViz asks for the username and password of an account you already have; it does not create one.
Import pulls a result into the library; a fixture already pulled in shows Imported.
OEM marks the manufacturer's own file. GDTF Share hosts manufacturers' files and other users' files for the same fixture. Marked results come first, and since only the first 25 matches are shown, that order is often what puts the official file on screen. An unmarked result is not suspect, and most are good; where both exist, take the marked one. Hover a result to see who uploaded it.
Results appear only once you type something.
The catalogue is read once a day, not per search, so a fixture uploaded to GDTF Share today may turn up tomorrow. Disconnecting and reconnecting fetches it again at once.
With the source filter on OFL, GDTF Share results are hidden.
Disconnecting removes your saved credentials, not the fixtures you imported.
Trusses
The Trusses tab is Prolyte's catalogue, converted from the manufacturer's own CAD: straights and corners, each with its article number and true dimensions. Search covers the name, the series and the article number, which is how a rigger names a part.
Three rows of buttons filter by shape:
- Ways
- 2-way, T, Cross and the counts beyond
- Bend
- The angles between any two of a part's ends
- Chord
- The tube diameter, in millimetres as measured
Several buttons within one row widen the search; Clear resets all three. The buttons are the catalogue's own values, so they change with what is loaded.
Chord sizes are measured, not nominal. 48.3, 49.5 and 50.8 mm are all called "two-inch", and none of them couple to each other, so the measured number is the safe one to search by.
A part whose ends could not be measured never matches a shape. It is still findable by name or article number. It is also a part that will not snap, since snapping depends on the same measurement.
Bases, adapters, sleeve blocks, box corners, towers and tubes are not in the library yet.
Primitives
Plain shapes for risers, walls, screens and set pieces. Drop a Plane or a Cube, then give it real dimensions in Properties. They stand in for the room and the set, so beams land on something and the plan reads as a stage. In WebGPU, planes and cubes also block light; see the renderer.