Improved fixture order window for generator
Posted: 30 July 2024, 00:33
The generator is largely an amazing tool and I love using it. If you need to edit the order the fixtures change in however it's a huge pain and time suck. Being required to individually move the fixtures one space/line at a time becomes extremely cumbersome when you have a lot of fixtures. If you're dealing with something like a Chauvet Freedom Stick for instance, in which there are 16 RGB options, and if you happen to have 16 lights, that alone is 256 different groups that have to be moved individually. Add individual RGB's from moving heads, par cans, etc and there are a lot of things to re-arrange if you're trying to create a specific effect. Trying to make a random/sparkly effect is extremely laborious and time consuming.
Some suggestions that would make this more functional would be:
- Randomize button which would automatically take all fixtures in the list and order them in a random order. This idea has been requested several times in the forums and there have been several people adding that it's a desirable option. Personally this is one that I would love to see, I have spent far too many hours re-arranging fixtures because every time I add some lights or take them out of the lineup I have to redo this, and a sparkle or random order is one I use quite often.
- Double pane or start/end. If you had the fixtures listed out in their current order, then a second window to drag/drop them into their new order that would allow a much faster option and greater flexibility. Perhaps a left/right arrow option would be better than the drag/drop though, or perhaps the default function is that the light is always dropped at the end of the list so you don't have to scroll through them all to drop a the end of the list. If this made more sense to the programmers, I'd personally be fine with this as it would still remove the requirement in the above scenario (which I'm currently programming..) to have to press the mouse button or space bar 200+ times as I'm re-ordering. I would be able to select the
- Ability to use Ctrl and Shift (and Ctrl+Shift) to select multiple fixtures at a time, then maintain that selection when you use the up/down buttons so you can move all the selected lights together
- Reverse button to automatically take all selected fixtures and reverse their order
Some suggestions that would make this more functional would be:
- Randomize button which would automatically take all fixtures in the list and order them in a random order. This idea has been requested several times in the forums and there have been several people adding that it's a desirable option. Personally this is one that I would love to see, I have spent far too many hours re-arranging fixtures because every time I add some lights or take them out of the lineup I have to redo this, and a sparkle or random order is one I use quite often.
- Double pane or start/end. If you had the fixtures listed out in their current order, then a second window to drag/drop them into their new order that would allow a much faster option and greater flexibility. Perhaps a left/right arrow option would be better than the drag/drop though, or perhaps the default function is that the light is always dropped at the end of the list so you don't have to scroll through them all to drop a the end of the list. If this made more sense to the programmers, I'd personally be fine with this as it would still remove the requirement in the above scenario (which I'm currently programming..) to have to press the mouse button or space bar 200+ times as I'm re-ordering. I would be able to select the
- Ability to use Ctrl and Shift (and Ctrl+Shift) to select multiple fixtures at a time, then maintain that selection when you use the up/down buttons so you can move all the selected lights together
- Reverse button to automatically take all selected fixtures and reverse their order