Urgent request: System break will only create open bars

I have a piece that is somewhat complex notationally. It is a duet and both players are often playing with different time signatures and so the bar lines don’t line up. Easy enough. The problem is that now I’m trying to clean up the parts and Dorico is creating lots of “open bars”. I’m trying to clean them up but when I use System break, it just creates a new open bar. It’s like System break is locked to an external grid and not respecting the measure lines for the parts. Help! Pics attached. Tan pages are with and without system break showing the open bars. White is how it looks in gallery view.

There’s a Layout Option>Staves and Systems>Casting off.Allow open bars to be split across system breaks.

I’d uncheck it. Remember to change it for the correct layout(s).

I tried both unchecking and checking that. It makes no difference. It was unchecked, and I thought maybe checking it would help (to allow open bars), but no luck either way.

With and without that option checked:


Hi @mbira, can you upload the Dorico project, to see better what may be going on?

I duplicated the flow and deleted the second player and I’ll create a part from each part. It’s not ideal, but all I can do right now. I’m seeing the issue is with the independent time signatures for each staff. That breaks the system break settings. When I delete the independent signatures and put in global sigs things are working as expected. I’ll create a simple test project and upload it to show the behavior. Will be a while because I need to get these parts done.