The Avolites Discussion Forum

Hi All,
20 odd years in the biz and just got my first Pearl (2010).
so... i would in training so i understand desks. We currently have a couple of strand 500s, a full size GrandMA, a congo and various others.
I will be doing the pearl course at some point in the future but i will have used it before then...
already had it up and running and managed to patch and run a few VL1000s and a couple of MAC TW1s and an atomic. so all cool so far,
My question...
i want to use the desk in our concert hall next week. the rig will be:
4 VL1000s and 6 MAC TW1s, AND 108 generic dimmer channels.
How do i patch? I know how to patch the movers to handles and the dimmers to handles and even groups of dimmers to handles, but how do i patch them all???? and still give the flexibility to have only 1 generic on at a time?
hope at least some of that makes sense.
Thanks
Kevin

Kevin Robertson
Academy Stage Manager
RSAMD
Glasgow

There are four pages each of 60 handles giving 240 maximum individual fixtures.

Use fixture page change buttons to select page.

To patch onto the upper bank hold down shift (Avo key) and the corresponding swop key. Because the shift+swop is awkward during programming or operation it tends to be common practice to patch dimmers onto the upper bank.

Thanks for that... makes sense when you know...

I'll let you know how i get on...

Any other tips more than welcome.

Kev

Regarding patching it can be useful to keep anything you might want direct access to during a show on page0.

One reason for this is purely convenience, but the other is that [clear] will remove output to stage for any raised fixture handles that did not originate from the current page. For example, raise fresnel handle on page1, change to page0 and [clear] = no fresnel, even though the handle is still raised.

This is by design to help clear handles across pages during programming, but is a well known problem when running a show.

It's worth spending time planning out your patch carefully since the handle locations cannot be changed without losing programming (erm, until this came up!).