Tip #1 - Replacing Patched Fixtures By Anothers With The Import Feature

[Mathieu]

Here's a quick way to replace the patched fixtures.

In this scenario, you have created a project with many effects and using many fixtures. Some week later, for another show, you want to reuse your effects but with another type of similar fixtures. For example, you initially used 20 Chauvet moving heads with CMY color mixing and now you want to use 20 Martin Mac 101, with RGB color mixing.

Solution: Use the Import feature

1) Create an empty project

2) Patch your new fixtures

3) Go in the File/Import menu and select your old project

4) Click import all, without checking the import patch option

Result:

Lightjams will recreate effects in your new project by merging the fixture IDs and their attributes. This merge is at the logical level instead of DMX address level. 

You can also do this to change fixture modes or do to deep DMX address reorganization. 

[Robin Larsson]

Great to know Mat! 

How different can the fixtures be? Do they have to patched in the same order, if you are using say both moving heads, ledbars and some strobes or something?

Thanks!

//Robin

[Mathieu]

The patch order can be drastically different as well as the fixtures :)

For example if you use the strobe attribute of fixture A in your first project, then whatever the DMX address in your new project, Lightjams will look for your newly patched fixture A, strobe attribute. This also means it will work when your old fixture was using 8 bits pan and now your new fixture is using 16 bits pan. 

If your new fixture doesn't have an attribute, it will simply be ignored. For example, you want to reuse effects created with RGB moving heads for RGB LED bars, then the pan & tilt attributes will be ignored while the color attributes (hue, saturation and intensity) will be recreated and linked to your LED bars.