Today I learned: resetting the Beam in Space Center

[ArrowType]

(This is something I posted on Slack, but I figured it might be useful to cross-post here for others.)

I can’t get my space center “Beam” to show up. This was a problem for me in 4.1 (but earlier as well, maybe) and now is still a problem in 4.2.

@ryan helpfully responded with the following code, asking "what’s this output?":

from lib.tools.defaults import getDefaultColor
from lib.tools.misc import NSColorToRgba
from mojo.UI import CurrentSpaceCenter

beam_color = NSColorToRgba(getDefaultColor("spaceCenterBeamStrokeColor"))

csc = CurrentSpaceCenter()

print(beam_color)
print(csc.beam())
csc.setBeam(500)

Turns out, my beam was a visible color but set super high:

(0.0, 0.0108, 0.9982, 1.0)
7856

And the setBeam() method fixed that. Thanks, Ryan!

@frederik added to the conversation:

makes me think, of an alt menu title for “Beam”: “Reset Beam” which restores the value to the original value (half of the height)

...which is an idea I like!

I’m not sure what to tag this, but I guess Feature Request makes sense, as a feature might help others avoid this confusion in the future. After all, I literally went many months without a beam before asking for help, because I figured it was something that was just broken and might be fixed in a future update. 😅 Glad I finally asked, but a "Reset Beam" option could have helped on my most recent serif project!