Soft Patching [fixed]

[PEDCLIGHT]

I have run into a similar situation as PINK LD. The past 2 years I have been doing the lighting for a dance show at a local venue. Each year there is an issue with the lighting plot not matching the actual lighting on stage. It is usually only a couple of fixtures but none the less I have to go into every scene created and correct them. Right now as I understand it the software can only be used as a hard 1 to 1 patch. I tell the venue that the software I am using has a hard patch before load in, but since they are used to using traditional lighting consoles, they never seem to pay attention. A soft patch feature would greatly enhance the software in making it easier to correct this issue if it should come up. Instead of taking hours to re program scenes, I would be able to soft patch the channels/fixtures that have changed. I just wanted to put my 2 cents in and think that this is a feature that should definitely be added to the software.

[Pink LD]

Well PEDCLIGHT, that makes two of us! Support says I was the only one asking.
The guys at Support and software development are great but have to make priority decisions for feature development based on demand and the complexity of the request. They have told me that as a feature it would be fairly easy to produce but demand is low, i.e. only the two of us requesting it.

Most of my peers travel with the entire lighting show meat-racked with their own dimmers and cabling. I, on the other hand, carry only my specialty lighting: 24 LED Pars, 12 Mac 250's and lasers. I forward a plot to the house, followed by a follow up phone call to determine adapting the House to my plot. I may end up with wash and Lekos on a balc rail or on the first electric rail but I have no idea what addresses each fixture will have.
And even their published plot is rarely accurate but with the House LD by my side I can soft-patch 60k and 10 Leko's on a conventional console in 30 minutes.
But I don't want to run the show on a conventional console when I can write sophisticated lighting off-site, on my 3D imager and Soft-Patch my show to the House.

I have also wanted to do the same to gigs I do at Summerfest in Milwaukee. The conventional rig on any of those stages is a standard 120k rig with fairly standard colors: R10, R27, R46, R80, R382, R91, NC, ACLs, etc. It would be nice just to Soft-Patch my existing programming to the festivals rig.

But as it is I will have to hold off on incorporating ShowXpress into my premium gig and keep it just for my local gig that owns the entire rig and that I design and address that rig as I see fit.

[PEDCLIGHT]

Hey Pink LD - I as well do not travel with the majority of the lighting that I use at the venue. I use the house lighting which typically takes up to channel 325 and then add a dozen LED Pars as well as a couple of MAC 700 profile units. I actually just got finished with a show 2 weeks ago. After load in I was focusing the lighting and realized they switched the channels for the upstage and downstage light strips. This is where I get most of my color for my basic washes. So it took me several hours to do some reprogramming. When I talked to the house LD he looks at me like I have 10 heads when I say I cannot soft patch in the software.

Well hopefully support takes a second look at this after they complete their other high priority items for the next software build. We will just have to wait and see.

[marco]

make it 3 then, in the past i did have the same problems. softpatch would be a solution

[Pink LD]

Support,

Thanks for your time and consideration.
I can do a lot with this software but without Soft-Patching or the Pink Floyd tribute act I work for tours with its own entire lighting rig, I can't use the software as the only "Lighting Desk" I use.
Or I have to dramatically simplify my programming to do re-writes at most venues. But its a Floyd act, you can't simplify the lighting, the show is largely about the lighting!
Still I can't take away from what I can do with this software for about $500 per universe!
I will leave this issue as unresolved but not forgotten. Thanks again!

P.S. While I was posting this I see Marco jumped in with his comment, thanks! That makes 3!
Support should I take a poll? Or leave it to you to decide?

[support]

We see that two other users are interested with soft patching.
We understand that you can not use fully the product because of this missing feature.
Soft patching is in the TODO list.

In the meantime, they are hundreds of users who can not use our product because of missing Macro feature.
And much more because of missing manual.
We hope you will understand that we must give priority to these people.

[Pink LD]

Support,
I fully understand. I only re-initiated the convo about this based on our conversation in May. At that time your feedback told me it was on the TODO list and I told you I would wait til late June to ask again.
I now know that my July gig will not have the feature to DMX Patch.
I consider this subject on hold and will not query it again until early August.
Thanks again guys!

[support]

Soft patching is available in beta version.
Note: soft patch is possible only inside each universe.

[tomrbland]

Where?

There is nothing in the beta file: http://download.thelightingcontroller.c ... ware/beta/

I notice it was updated though.

[support]

Tom, don't you see one 20Mb EXE file and one 300Kb ZIP file ?