Ok, so I'm working on a room with multiple elements in it, I've got lasers, redirection cubes, light bridges, boxes and buttons all working fine. Then I tried adding an excursion funnel ("prop_tractor_beam"). In Hammer, it looks fine. I placed it, arranged it, hooked it up to a button with a trigger, but when I loaded the map to test it, the excursion funnel machine is facing the wrong direction, in the wrong spot, and something weird is wrong with its texture, like it's made of glass or it's making a excursion-funnel-machine-shaped hole in the game and showing my skybox or something, I dunno. Weirdly, it still WORKS, the button turns it on and off, but the machine itself is still in the wrong place, wrong direction, and has a weird ghosted-out texture. The beam itself works fine, albeit in the wrong spot/direction. Everything else in the room is fine, looks normal, and works as expected.

One other weird thing, one of my laser emitters keeps generating a "ERROR: Bone access not allowed" message in the console, but it's otherwise OK. What does Bone access not allowed mean?

That does sound weird that the funnel is facing the opposite direction, but the reason why it looks shiny glass could be because you don't have any cubemaps (or built the cubemaps) in your map. Cubemaps are responsible for reflections in your map.

For the second point: I think bone access meant the attachment to a certain 'bone' or point on a model. Did you parent anything to the laser? Maybe this is normal, don't know.

Had the same problem at one point, Hammer got confused about which way my tractor was facing after I rotated it one too many times - Id suggest just deleting it and trying again.

Ok, I'll try that. Inside Hammer, though, it still looks fine. I guess the error is somewhere in the compiling phase. I'll try replacing the funnel with a fresh one. And I'll look into cubemaps.

I don't have anything parented to the laser, no. I'm using env_portal_laser for the emitter, that's where the message is coming from. All the other laser components are error-free. Could it be because it's clipping slightly into the wall? That wouldn't make sense, though, I've got other things clipping into walls without bone messages. I'll experiment more.

Edit: It was indeed the cubemap, thanks for that. And replacing the funnel with a new one fixed the misplacement problem too. Excellent! Everything is working as it should be, for now.

I'm still getting the Bone error message, except now it's coming from the funnel and not the laser. Go figure.