MVR does not explain the purposes of the fixture identity fields

[RichardTea]

The mvr-spec.md lists several fields that are used to identify individual luminaires within a lighting console or visualiser, but is very unclear about how each of them is intended to be used:

• name The name of the object
• FixtureID The Fixture ID of the lighting fixture. This is the short name of the fixture.
• UnitNumber The unit number of the lighting fixture in a position.
• CustomID The Custom ID is a value that can be used as a short name of the Fixture Instance. This does not have to be unique. The default value is 0.

Vectorworks 2022 SP3 appears to do the following:

• name is VWX Instrument Type, duplicating data given via the GDTFSpec field. (The Vectorworks Object Name is not exported at all)
• FixtureID is Channel
• UnitNumber is Unit Number
• CustomID appears to be unused, always zero

Of these, only UnitNumber really matches the MVR spec.

Furthermore, "Short name" implies the "shortname" from GDTF, when it appears to actually be the (usually) numeric console channel.

This is also a quite confusing use of name. I had expected that to be some user-entered text specific to this luminaire, rather than a duplicate of GDTFSpec.

There's also an implication that FixtureID and UnitNumber have to be unique, because FixtureTypeId and CustomId both state that they are not unique.

[Bartel-C8]

@moritzstaffel : Should we pick up the discussion of latest Monthly meeting here?

[moritzstaffel]

@Bartel-C8 Yes good idea. We also have some discussion process here. But I need to update my notes so that I can publish them

[danielmuellerma]

this has been improved