Soft Patching [fixed]

[Pink LD]

Support,
I know the subject of "soft-patching" was brought up but I am curious how you foresee it functioning.
On a conventional console, say a simple straight forward Leprecon 624, soft-patching is used to connect up to 96 dimmers DMX dimmers to any one of the 24 "handles" on the console.
But this software based control system doesn't have the same constraints as a conventional console and it not designed to limit the lighting rig to finite number of "handles", so here are a couple of questions:
-Will it available for each universe or just the first one only?
-How many channels would I be able to soft-patch to a single channel?
-Could I soft-patch a channel to multiple channels?
-Do you foresee it being able to soft-patch across multiple universes?
*For example: ch 300 of U3 patched to ch 1 of universe 1, channel 6 of U2 patched to ch 2 of U1, etc?
Thanks!

[support]

Please let us finish the next version with Timeline (should be end of this month).
We will able to answer you only once we will code this function.

[Pink LD]

Thanks!
It's a function I would like to understand by July so I can program for a show I have in August.
I will refrain from further questions about it til June.
Happy programming!

[Pink LD]

Support,
I now see that Timeline is done, DMX Input has been rolled out with the 6.22 version and as I said in earlier conversations about DMX Soft-Patching I would wait to continue my query about this feature til late June.
My initial questions from the start of this thread are still valid and so I am just following up to see what you have to say now.
Thanks!

[support]

6.22 is beta only ; so still some work before releasing a no beta version.

We still have some urgent jobs like "Macros" for instance. In the meantime, the manual English version is almost ready. We have now to work on Spanish, Chinese and French versions.

We organise our job following the demand, and until now, it looks that "soft patching" does not have a big interest because only one request for it !

[tomrbland]

Out of interest I don't quite understand what you mean by "soft patching" what does soft patching do the 2D view doesn't?

[support]

If we right understood, Pink LD would like that, after the show is done, if he changes the dmx address of a fixture, there is a possibility in the software to redirect the dmx outputs in order that the existing show remains ok with the fixture (which has now another dmx address).

[marco]

hi the funtion that support says looks useful to me, i use different shows were i have to put the fixtures on different lokations, with the possibilaty to redirect the output would save me a lot of programming. i could use the same scenes then without of swithing shows,
But i think thant pink ld means with soft patching means patching the dmx in to several channels. and that funtion is working now.

[tomrbland]

If we right understood, Pink LD would like that, after the show is done, if he changes the dmx address of a fixture, there is a possibility in the software to redirect the dmx outputs in order that the existing show remains ok with the fixture (which has now another dmx address).

Why change the address of a fixture?

hi the funtion that support says looks useful to me, i use different shows were i have to put the fixtures on different lokations, with the possibilaty to redirect the output would save me a lot of programming. i could use the same scenes then without of swithing shows,
But i think thant pink ld means with soft patching means patching the dmx in to several channels. and that funtion is working now.

Rather than re-programming why can't you just readdress?

[Pink LD]

Folks,
First and foremost DMX Input is a very different feature meant for the use of a wing conventional console if you have USB DMX hub that that has a DMX Input. This allows you to assign DMX addresses of the ShowXpress software to "Handles" of a conventional console controller. Leaving the feature DMX Input out of this discussion because it is a different feature altogether I will continue to speak about the function of "Soft-Patching"

I use this software for a variety of shows but let me speak to just one show that I do and why I would want to use "Soft-Patching" from the conventional sense of using a conventional console controller to run conventional style lighting fixtures such as Pars, ACL's and Leko's (Source 4's).

We tour a show that is back-line, and specialty lighting and no audio. It is a hybrid theatre and rock and roll.
As such 60K of conventional lighting and 10 Leko's are required per my lighting rider with specifications to location and gels from my light plot at each of the venues I tour.
So I wrote the programming in ShowXpress for my conventional lighting programming in Universe 1 in the DMX addresses of 401-512.
In most every case a conventional dimmer rack, such as the House would provide, can be set to any start address so I request they start it low, as low as DMX 001.
If the rig is fairly standard than the patch sheet the House LD provides me of the plot will be something like this:
UST R1 Pars(Upstage truss, rack 1): Red 1, Green 2, Amber 3, NC 4, Blue 5, Lav 6
UST R2 Pars: Red 7, Green 8, Amber 9, NC 10, Blue 11, Lav 12

Then I can take, for example, my ShowXpress programming of the house conventional Red Upstage Pars which I wrote at DMX address 401 and "Soft-Patch" ShowXpress to the House dimmer rack.
In this example: Red from UST R1 and Red from UST R2 would be channels 1 and 7 "Soft-Patched" to Dmx 401.

This is a much easier way to patch my programming to the production provided house fixtures than digging around the back of a 60K dimmer rack and "HARD-Patching" the rack to my programming and specifications.

I believe Support understands what I am asking about but if you are unsure please ask me if you are unsure. My original set of questions still stand that I opened this forum with.

Thanks again!