Is there any way to turn off the way Dorico moves things around on a regular basis.
E.g., I add a line, and other things move. Etc.
TIA
Dorico constantly recalculates the layout and spacing, based on your settings (globally or locally). You can switch on collision avoidance for text and vertical lines, but not for horizontal lines (yet) - as far as I know. Searching this forum showed me:
As always, it’s best to provide concrete examples of particular things, to get the best help.
@k_b that’s an old post you’re referring to. It is possible to turn off collision avoidance for horizontal lines in the Properties panel in Engrave mode:
edit: this is only possible when none of the attachment points is set to Noteheads.
@MusiComPublishing In general, you can also turn off collision avoidance in the same way for a number of (but not all) objects. Off the top of my head I know this for staff/system text and slurs, but I’m sure there are others. For text items you can turn off collision avoidance in the Paragraph style (if you do that and then set a key command to that Paragraph style, you’ll be able to enter text quickly with no collision avoidance). For some items you can also tweak or even disable collision avoidance settings globally in Engraving options (search for “collision” in the search bar).
You can also bring out the big guns by unchecking this setting in Layout options>Vertical Spacing>Collision avoidance:
But: that will mean you have to manually position pretty much everything. I never uncheck this myself but I have seen fellow forum users mention they occasionally do this.
For more concrete advice, as Ben mentions it would be helpful if you could provide an example.
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Thanks, I’ll look at those options.
Currently I’m not writing a piece of music but pedagogical content, so I need things to align in certain ways that are best for that format.
I’d like it if I could just turn off ALL the automatic adjusting Dorico does because in this particular case it’s making things jump around that I really want to stay put. When I add something or remove something or remove something, object I had previously placed just as I want them jump to where I don’t want them. In other words, I need Dorico to stop “helping” me. When I did this in Sibelius I would just turn off the magnetic button.
If you read and add up all above comments, you can completely turn off collision avoidance(s).
What exactly do you mean by “things”? I’m asking because there might be ways to deal with some of your issues, but that depends on what you’re doing exactly. For example, I hardly ever use playing techniques because I don’t like what they do to other objects in tight spaces and you can’t turn off collision avoidance for them. So I use staff text instead. Playback is not very important for me but if I really need a PT for playback (e.g. a mute indication) I hide it and still put in the staff text, for which I created a separate Paragraph style with a key command.
I mean just about any object that can be moved.
For example, I had a horizontal line right where I wanted it, but I lower a group of notes by an octave and the line moved downward too. And I have “Avoid Collisions” turned off for it.
I think with lines it makes a difference, whether you have input them linked to notes or linked to rhythmical positions. I am on my Phone here, so I can’t confirm this, but this “pre-choice” when you create a line might by crucial when moving notes afterwards.
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I can’t reproduce that. As k_b says it does depend on the attachment points you’ve chosen.
When the line is attached to Noteheads, it moves vertically when you change the pitch (I also just noticed that you can’t turn off collision avoidance in the Properties when either one of the attachment points is set to Noteheads, I edited my previous post). However when it’s attached to a rhythmic position or the barline and collision avoidance is turned off (so the toggle switch activated but the box unchecked), the vertical position doesn’t change for me:
What I did notice though is that the lefmost point of the grid-attached line shifts depending on whether or not ledger lines are involved. You can see it in the gif when it jumps from inside the staff to above or below. Since the rhythmic grid itself is not altered by the presence of ledger lines I’m wondering if that’s the intended behavior.
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Yes, that makes sense. If ledger lines are present, the line slightly extends the ledger lines, not to be obstructed by them— a nice little thoughtful gem. Maybe the developers will at some point take into account that, if the ledger lines are on the opposite side of the system, one doesn’t need that extra kindness.