Hi- I saw a topic on this that doesn’t quite seem to answer my question- I thought the defaults should override system collisions, but I changed my Rastral size from 7 to 6, and then this happened a few pages in:
Is there a way to fix this without manually moving the systems around?
I’ve noticed similar problems with spacing before, even though it seems I have all the “avoid collision” settings on.
I’m a brand new Dorico user from Finale- only 2-3 months- forgive my ignorance and difficulty processing all the new lingo and the (to me) foreign way of approaching notation entry.
I’m curious why Dorico is not avoiding this collision and is allowing such an obvious clash of staves/systems- there must be something I’m missing.
I suspect there’s just too much on that page and something has to give, and it’s the space between the systems rather than the systems themselves. Dorico will show you how full the systems and page are. The system fullness will be shown as a percentage at the end of the system in Engrave mode. The page fullness is shown at the bottom of the page.
Make sure that you haven’t added any Frame Breaks, or set systems per page in Layout Options > Casting Off.
Otherwise, you’ll need to show us the entire project file so we can see what’s going on. (You’re not helping matters by the wide piano part. Removing the unnecessary rests may help.)
Thanks! That’s interesting. I see now it DOES say 109.4% in a red thingie on the bottom. But I’m curious why. I never told it to do that, nor have I added any frame breaks- I’m trying, as the tutorial videos imply, to make the layout as close to what I want using just the layout options (setup) before I start adding breaks and other tricks to arrange the page. I didn’t tell it to override anything, and I see all my “avoid collision” options are still set, and yet it ‘decided’ on its own to cram 109.4% into this page. I know in Finale, what I’d do at this point is go to “update layout” and most of the time, it would go through the piece and update the layout and fix more than half of these kinds of odd things that crop up when you change the size of things. But in Dorico I haven’t seen any equivalent to “update layout.” So I’m not sure if I should start going into engrave mode and start hammering things out manually, or is that just jack-hammering about in the china shop and I’m missing a step which won’t cause as many long term problems.
Thanks! Again, the reason this is so curious to me, is that I have NOT added any frame breaks, or forced any music onto a page… I’m trying to get as close to an elegant layout first using ONLY the layout and setup mode. Also, I’ve seen this kind of thing crop up repeatedly- colliding and overlapping systems in obvious, even absurd violation of the “avoid collision” settings- which is one reason I’m posting this. This is, in part, an experiment to see what happens when I avoid manually dragging systems around before I play with the layout options- that caused some big problems down the road in my last project.
Also, I’m not sure what you mean by “wide piano part?” I haven’t altered anything in individual staves, and I carefully checked to make sure the “avoid collision” controls are all still set. In the ones I am aware of anyway, they are all still active. Also, in “casting off” there’s nothing selected.
Like I said to the last responder, in Finale at this point I’d go to “update layout” and most of the time, it would go through the piece and update the layout and fix more than half of these kinds of odd things that crop up when you change the size of things. But in Dorico I haven’t seen any equivalent to “update layout.” So I’m not sure if I should start going into engrave mode and start hammering things out manually, or is that just jack-hammering about in the china shop and I’m missing a step which won’t cause as many long term problems.
Thanks again for your attention!
oh yeah- I’m not sure how to share a whole project on here
Hi @composerdoh, what is probably happening is the “circular problem” that is well known by the developers.
In this post you will find more informations about the background of it, and how to correct this:
If you would like to post your Dorico file here, I am sure someone can give further advice about the best strategy on how to correct this (being a strategically inserted Frame Break probably the best/fastest solution, but there may be other ways, depending on the context)
I thought I was adding that reply to you- not sure if that worked- it looks like it’s not a reply just to you, but it looks on my end like it went through.
(Others may have better ideas) One solution would be to move bar48 onto the next page, that means the piano would not be shown in the 2nd system, and everything spaces neatly.
The problem(s) are mainly caused by the large text blocks. One the one hand, Dorico doesn’t move the top system down to accommodate the text; and on the other hand, it moves staves apart within the page to avoid collisions.
First thing I would suggest is to reduce the Top and Bottom Page Margins a bit, to give you a bit more breathing room. (i.e. the distance to the header.) You’ve given yourself a good size Music Frame Margin, to allow stuff to appear above the top staff; but some of your text blocks need more room.
I’ve added two Frame Breaks, basically to put fewer systems on two of the pages than Dorico wants to, in order to allow room for your text. I’ve manually adjusted the position of the top two systems on page 3; but you’ll need to balance those text blocks. Sadly, Dorico doesn’t have staff-attached text that wraps to a size yet.
I’ve also increased the second Vertical Justification % to 100%, so that you’ll always have staff justification, unless the page is less than 60% full.
The ‘wideness’ I was talking about was really height – the distance apart of the piano staves in 38. That’s a bit better now.
