Custom Increments

Hi everyone,

Here's yet another tip which may save you some time the next time you're patching or assigning other attributes to fixtures. A user (sort of) asked about using this feature earlier today, I explained it to him, and figured it would be good to post the information here, for those who need it.


The Custom Increment option for Patch in QuickTools allows you to skip a number of DMX Channels with each click. Let’s say you’re patching four RGB fixtures of three channels each… if you enter a custom increment of 2 Additional channels (i.e. with the Additional option selected in the dropdown) two channels will be skipped after each fixture’s patch; here is what will happen:

• The first fixture is patched at A.1 through A.3 (assuming that you start patching at DMX = 1, of course).
  
  
• Channels A.4 and A.5 will be skipped/left empty
  
  
• The second fixture will be patched at A.6 through A.8.
  
  
• Channels A.9 and A.10 will be skipped.
  
  
• The third fixture will be patched at A.11 through A.13
  
  
• Channels A.14 and A.15 will be left empty.
  
  
• The last fixture will be patched at A.16 through A.18.
  

Naturally, you can set Custom Increment to any value you wish. **


You also have the option to set QuickTools to IGNORE the fixture’s known patch footprint, and instead patch a specific number of channels with each click--this is what the Total option is for, in the Custom Increment dropdown, and it works as follows...

Let’s say you have a VL 2500 (which has a 22-channel DMX footprint), a VL 3000 (which has a 28-channel DMX footprint) and an RGB fixture which has a three-channel DMX footprint); you set the Custom increment to 15 and you select Total from the dropdown. Here’s what will happen:

• The VL 2500 will be patched from A.1 through A.22 (assuming of course that you start patching at DMX = 1).
  
  
• The VL 3000 will be patched from A.16 through A.43, so channels 16 through 22 will be “double-patched” (making for some interesting “effects”, most likely J).
  
  
• The RGB fixture will be patched from A.31 through A.33, so these channels are now “shared” with the VL 3000’s “Gobo 2” channels.
  

(It goes without saying that for the above to work, the Auto-Increment checkbox in QuickTools has to be checked.)


** You can also skip channels when you’re patching sequentially in the Spreadsheet: to do this, instead of typing A.1+ and pressing <enter> after you’ve selected the patch cells, enter the number of channels to skip after the + and then press <enter>; this works for all columns where sequential entry can be used—Channel, Patch, Dimmer, Spot, Unit and Circuit. (However, there is no equivalent to Total Custom Increment in the Spreadsheet.)


Let me know if you have any questions,

Dany

 

As per my last point (i.e. the paragraph starting with **), this is already possible. Not as a Total Custom Increment, but then that doesn't make sense anyway for Channel, Dimmer, Spot, Unit and Circuit, since those only ever increment by a value of 1 by default, or by whatever custom value you enter after the +.

 

In that case, you are patching the fixture incorrectly, as the operation mode that you selected for it in WYSIWYG does not match the profile you chose to patch on your console. As such, you will have to either change the mode in WYSIWYG (fixture's Properties > Fixture tab > Options subtab) or obtain/patch a matching profile on the console.