Patch.PDF: suggestions.

To enable other people in our (theater-)team to see what is being done, I write the show and patch to PDF (great idea to have that added, Nico !).

May I make some suggestions on the Patch.PDF ?

1. The title (top-right) show always "Show:(null)". I guess this needs to be the show-title, but somehow picks up the wrong variable.
2. I have set the number of channels (in "SETUP") to 512, but the PDF 'prints' 2048 channels, which creates 24 pages, of which I only need 6. Smaller shows may only need 1 page. Can the output be limited to the number of used channels ?
3. There are 90 channels on a page. Would it be possible to put 100 channels, to make it easier (in a big list) to find the right channel.
4. Would it be possible to add a 'name' to the channel/dimmer. This way, it is much easier to see what that channel is being used for, specially for people that did not design the lightshow. This name can, I think, already be enter, under 'test channels'.
5. Ideally (but that may be a lot of work), the Patch.PDF would have columns for 'Type' (PAR, Fresnel, Moving Head, ..), 'Watt', 'Description', 'Location' (where does this fixture hang?), 'Aiming at' (forwards/backwards/..), 'Function' (Dimmer/Pan/Tilt/Gobo/...), 'Gel' (e.g "L126"), Colour (e.g. :Mauve"). [See attached spreadsheet]

Thanks again for all the great work !

Noel,
you're absolutely right.
I think I'll re-design the Patch window to be able to add info regarding type/power/etc...
it was the primary goal of the check channel window but I think it would be more usefull inside the patch window.
I'm just waiting for a Patch page for Control layout to completely remove the check-channel window/functions...

++
Nico

I've been digging a bit deeper into this subject...

In view of the plans to make DL work with scanners, MH (moving heads), and/or LED, it may become important/necessary to add the details of the 'fixture personality' to the patch, so DL knows what to do with each channel.

The first item that comes to mind is whether a channel is a 'dimmer' (Today, all channels in DL are considered to be dimmers) or something else (Pan, Tilt, Gobo, ...). When you do a BlackOut, you would want your dimmers to go to 0, but you probably wouldn't want the mirrors/MH/Gobo/... to move. This goes as well for the GrandMaster, which in such case should only work on the dimmer-channels.

Have a nice weekend,
Noël

channels assigned as color scroller are already not under the control of the GrandMaster (I have to check for the Blackout....)
and I plan to do the same for fixtures parameters that are not dimmers.
because your right in case of BlackOut, we don't want the fixtures to move.

I didn't thought of the Patch window to deal with adrress spec but more with an independent window, a kind of library...

++