Workspace with Fixtures and Sub-Fixtures

[gilesm]

Hi

When working with a mixture of Fixtures and Sub-Fixtures, having to unfold/exit-unfold to get to sub-fixtures is a pain. At best it needs lots of button pushes to unfold/exit-unfold. At worse it just doesn't work very well, for example if I'm trying to edit the fixture order of a group that contains both Fixtures and Sub-Fixtures.

One easy way round this would be to assign Sub-Fixtures to handles in the main Fixtures Workspace Window, but I haven't been able to figure out how to do this. Does anyone know if it's possible?

Giles.

[gilesm]

I have found out about Layouts, which are most of the answer; I can add handles for both fixtures and cells to a custom Layout, which makes it easier to select Fixtures and individual Cells at the same time. Nice.

Layouts aren't used to set Fixture Order though, that is still (apparently) only possible from the Fixtures window, so I can't easily switch between Regular and Unfolded mode while adjusting Fixture Layout.

[icke_siegen]

Yes, this is possible (albeit I wouldn't recommend it):

1. after patching your fixtures, move the fixtures into the Groups workspce window
2. select the fixtures, hit <Unfold>, [Selected Fixtures] -- now the cells appear in the Fixtures workspace window
3. select all the cells and move them into the Groups window
4. hit <Unfold>, then [Exit Unfold]
5. finally move fixtures and cells back in the Fixtures window and arrange them as you like

As this is not the intended way, you will notice some issues:

• you cannot delete the cells. If you want to ged rid of them, try moving them onto an unused page in the Fixtures window
• if you delete a master fixture, all other fixtures are moved to page 0 (you can find them in the Show Library)
• if you delete a master fixture, all cells disappear, and you have to repeat the a.m. trick

I strongly recommend to NOT go this way, but rather get into a habit of using groups. This saves you from so much trouble, in particular from accidentally using wrong selections, arrangements and cell orders: just create the few cell grooups you need, and use them in your playbacks and shapes/effects. You can even move groups into your Fixtures window, thus there is absolutely no reason to put cells into the fixtures window (which would soon get cluttered as well).

[gilesm]

Hi

Ah! I see! I've got some Groups set up but saw them a bit as a workaround to this, rather than being a better way of doing it. Thanks for the advice, that's really useful.

I have hit a snag with Groups and Cells though, in that I don't seem to be able to edit Fixture Order properly. It works fine with regular fixtures. But when I try to edit the Group's Fixture Order, although I can see the order of the individual Cells displayed (while in Unfold), tapping cells to add/remove from a Fixture Order Step doesn't do anything, the order number of the Cell does not change.

Obviously I can be careful of selection order when creating the Group, but I'm trying to create a centre-outwards overlap effect so I need more than one Cells in the same Fixture Order step - which I think should be possible as it's shown in tutorials on YouTube.

Am I doing something wrong with my Group of Cells?

[gilesm]

Found it - The x-position of the Group Layout is the same thing as Fixture Order. Which, in fairness, is explained in the manual. So: editing the Group Layout means I can change the Fixture Order of Cells in a Group, and stack multiple Cells into the same step. Jolly good.