Changing multiple lights at once

[drfabinex]

Hi, i tried a project in Twilight that involved 15 pot lights to light a kitchen model based off a real kitchen. Is their any way in Twilight to change multiple light settings at once? For example if I want to add more orange to all the lights is it possible to change them all at once or can it only be done one at a time?

Hopefully this is just a silly noob question. To note: I am both silly and quite noobish (noobian?)

[Fletch]

hi dr
There is currently no way to change multiple light settings for multiple components at once... a "Master Advanced Light Control Panel" as such... perhaps we need one in Twilight v.2?
The best way to control lights in Twilight is to put them inside of actual light components.

So you build your housing for your light fixture in SketchUp, make it a component, open the component for editing and INSERT the Twilight Spot Light there AND NAME IT for easy finding later. Then close the component. When you copy the component around the scene, that same light will go with each one. Then when you select that light in the light editor dialog you can change it once, and it will change everywhere.

The more clumsy way to accomplish a similar task:
insert Spot1 into your scene.
next time you need a light, you use SketchUp's move>copy function to copy that spot somewhere else.
now when you change Spot1, it will change in both locations.

If you insert Spot1, then insert Spot2, then insert Spot3, and so on, I'm afraid you will have to edit each one individually.

To fix that situation quickly...
select Spot2 and Spot3, then go to your scene's components dialog in SketchUp and find the Spot1 light component, right-click it's preview image there and choose "replace selected".
now Spot2 and Spot3 will also be Spot1. Now when you change Spot1, all 3 spots will be changed.

[drfabinex]

Fantastic! That's a very easy way to control multiple lights.

A "master light control panel" would be a welcome addition in V2 imho. It would facilitate working with copies of different components and make it so you don't have to remember which lights are grouped, in cases where you have have the same component with different bulbs inside.

Thanks for the speedy reply

[Fletch]

we are at your service,

keep in mind the "make unique" function in SU will serve you well with light components.

let's say you have several down-lights representing "100w" bulb down-lights for instance... "Downlight100"
and you now want about 4 identical lights, but they should be 40w for a lower soffit...

• copy the "Downlight100" component down onto the new soffit, then rt-click>Make Unique.
  HOWEVER... this will only rename the component in SU to be "Downlight100#1" or something like this.
• now, change the name to be "Downlight40"
  this will STILL not make it so you can edit the 40w bulb separately from the other 100w bulbs...
• you must now OPEN the "Downlight40" component and select the light component inside, and rt-click>make unique.
• and now change the name for that new "bulb" in Twilight's light editor dialog, for easy future finding.

and, save these components you are making into a components folder so you can have them later all ready to go!

also, of course there are several nice components avail. for free to licensed Twilight forum members.