Break barlines

Does anybody know how to brak barline between staves and/or make a Grand/Orchestral (together)staff?

Could you elaborate on your question?

You can force a system break from Bar Line properties (select the bar line, then Edit | Properties).

You can also set grand staff styles in conjunction with the orchestral style, if the grand staff style is not the first staff in the system.

What Artur may be asking is how to construct a system of staves in which the barline does not run uninterrupted from the top of the system to the bottom, but rather has gaps between various groups of staves within the system For example, in an orchestral score, you might want each instrument family (woodwinds, brass, percussion, strings) to have its own continuous barline, with gaps separating the families.

(If not isn't Artur's question, I apologize, but this is one of the first questions that I asked myself when doing an orchestral score in NWC.)

The only way I've found to do this is to use staff layering. Imagine, for example, that you want a barline gap between second bassoon and first horn. All your wind and brass staves should have their Visual Style set to "Orchestral" so that their barlines connect with the surrounding staves. Then, below the second bassoon, create a new staff and give it the "Standard" visual style, and edit the second bassoon staff to turn on the "Layer with next staff" property. When you enable layering in File/Page Setup, you'll end up with a layered second bassoon staff that is connected to the staves above it (the rest of the woodwinds) but disconnected from the staves below it (the brass section).

Of course, if you're layering the bottom staff of a grouping anyway (e.g., you're constructing a "Bassoons" staff using layered 1st and 2nd bassoon staves) then you don't need to invent a third layered staff - just change the Style property of the lower of the existing staves.

Am I making this too hard? If there's an easier way of achieving this effect, I'd love to hear of it.

To expand only slightly on Grant's post -- there is quite a bit you can do using the "dummy staff" layered under an actual staff. For instance, you can put bracketed (grand staff) pairs in the middle, even bracketed staves without continuous barlines (as can be handy for vocal lines such as sop and tenor, where you don't want the barlines interfering with the lyrics). Though it seems fiddly, it's really not too hard once you get the hang of it -- and easier to do by experimentation than to try to explain it.

Grant got it, and I think it would be amaselingly nice to have a feature to do it, without using dummies and others, because they can screw things up when you export to midi. (e.g. try to open in winjammer and you´ll see lots of empty staves.)

Artur, your reply makes me think of someone has written earlier.
I think there is a way not to export the "dummy" staves, but I cannot check it reite now.
Try to search on the "offline" forum.
BTW, your question leads me to an advice: make the layout as you want, but ONLY when you're done with entering "musical" (rests, notes, lyrics) data. Bar breaking can be done after; and the same goes for staff breaking (since it may change, depending on paper size)
On another side, the trick indicated by Grant may easily be automatically with that good old macro recorder, since it is always the same process (except placing the new staff at the proper place)
Here is the process in the most stable way, which is not exactly the same one would do "normally":
1. go to the staff where you want to break barlines under it (not in the macro)
2. edit properties of the staff (F2), and allow layering (I think Alt+Home will go to first tab), Validate (Enter)
3. select the whole staff (Home, Shift+End, Ctrl+Ins)
4. Create the new staff (Ctrl+A), copy the origin staff (Shift+Ins)
5. Edit its properties to "standard", upper size=8, lower size=8 (not to interfere with real size)
6. Open the menu for moving the staff to the place you want (stop recording the macro just before starting to move the staff)
7. Place the staff where you want.
The macro automatize the steps 2 to 6 incl., so you just have 3 actions to do now. Ain't that easy? :)
Of course, it doesn't replace the ability (that NWC doesn't offer (yet?)) to break bar without breaking the "system".

[Sorry if you find some error in the process over here, but I'm currently stuck on a VT100 terminal with no graphic capability, so writing this from memory]
If someone is interested, PLMK, I'll create and send the macro file. (This is much more quicker to do than a TT Font! ;)
HTH, Dominique