Editing Artist Help: Palettes

The palettes provide fast access to colour, gobos, fixture positions (focus) and beam states. It is useful both during programming and in operation for providing a fast and easy manual override of programmed cue data, for example, changing a fixture colour or changing a fixture or group fixtures to a new position.

These palette indexes are reference by cues that use them therefore if the data in the index is altered the change will be reflected in the cues that reference it.

Quick Change
Activating any Fixtures and clicking a colour in the Colour Palette causes the active fixtures to change to that colour. If the fixture does not contain the selected colour it will remain unchanged. Fixture that have a mixing device will be sent the necessary data to produce the selected colour.

The palette indexes work across fixture group meaning that any active fixture in any group will change.

The Brush, Focus and Beam palettes works in exactly the same way. However, while the colour and Brush palette provide pre-defined data the Focus and Beam palettes must be programmed to be of use.

Focus and Beam
The Focus and Beam, palette are slightly different in that they require programming. These palettes consists of an array of buttons called Indexes which can be named and assigned parameter data. You can, for example, set a Beam button to provide data to make the beam of every fixture come on. What makes it so useful is that only active fixtures are affected, so although the button may contain data for every fixture, data is only sent to active fixtures.

The Focus palette is only for fixture parameters that have the Position attributes set. In general these are the Yoke and Mirror types.

The Beam palette is for fixture parameters that have the Beam attribute set. These are usually dimmer, shutter and any effect that is not a gobo. 

Creating an all 'Beams on' Index
In the Fixtures view activate all fixtures in the current group. Using the Fixture Control Panels set the level you want to set for all fixtures. This will set the parameter flags. You can then set the levels required in other fixture groups if required. You can do this at a later stage if you want. 

click on the Store Beam button in the Beam palette window. This will open the Add Beam data dialog. 

the tree view displays all the fixture parameters that have the Beam attribute and have their parameter flags set. Each item will be displayed as checked indicating that it will be stored. To avoid storing any item, uncheck it. 

The combo box displays a new Beam index name. You can change the name or select an existing index to add these data to. If you select an existing index data stored for fixtures other than the ones checked in the tree are unchanged. 

click OK to store. 

In general an index will contain data for fixtures in more than one group.

Set all Beams on Using Palette
Activate the Fixtures you wish to access either in the usual way using the fixture view or using the Fixture Navigator. The advantage in this is that you can activate fixtures in any group by double-clicking their icons. 

click on the Beam index. All those selected fixture will be on. 

Creating a Centre Floor focus position
Using the Fixtures view set the preset levels for all fixtures in the group. The preset levels will, in general, set the beams to on. 

using the joypad, position one fixture at a time to point to the centre of the floor. 

click on the Store Focus button in the Focus palette window. This will open the Add Focus data dialog. 

the tree view displays all the fixture parameters that have the position  attribute. Each item will be displayed as checked indicating that it will be stored. To avoid storing any item, uncheck it. 

Type 'Centre Floor' in the combo box. 

click OK to store. 

Point all Fixture to the Centre floor
Activate the Fixtures you wish to access either in the usual way using the fixture view or using the Fixture Navigator. The advantage in this is that you can activate fixtures in any group by double-clicking their icons. 

click on the 'Centre Floor' index. All those selected fixture will be pointed to the centre of the floor.