Getting Started Guide - Making and working with groups

Let's have a look at a way to organize our fixtures. Right now we only have 12 fixtures, but we expand it later in this guide.

So we should have a look at a way to organize the fixtures into groups.

Groups contain a selection of fixtures - it could also just be one fixture. It doesn't have any information about values, it's just a selection of fixtures and the selection order - remember the selection order can be important.

Let's have a look at the Group view. Press the Group key. This will give us an empty Group view on screen 1. 

It has 28 squares. Each square represent one group. If you scroll the rightmost encoder, you'll see that there's a lot more than 28 available. 

Let's make a group.

Make sure you don't have anything or any selection in your programmer.

Now select all your fixtures. This is the fastest way:

Thru Please

This actually selects all fixtures from the lowest possible ID number to the highest. Now we have a selection and we can store this as a group:

Store Group 1 Please

This created group number 1 with the selected fixtures and it gave it a name: "Dim".

To check it, you could open a Group view on screen 2 and clear you programmer. This should give you a Fixture view on screen 1 and a group view on screen 2.

Try to press the Dim group. This should select all your Fixtures - if it doesn't, then you should delete it and restart this chapter from the beginning.

Let us give the group a better name: Label Group 1 Please

This opens a Enter Name window that allows us to change the name of the group. Call it "All Dimmers".

When we store a group we are actually able to get this window immediately. As soon as you have stored the group you can begin typing on an external keyboard to enter the name. Or when you store the group, you can press this little balloon

and get the Enter Name window.

Let's make one more group. It should contain fixtures 1 and 2. It should be group number 2 and be called "All FOH".

I would like to make one thing very clear. The groups are just a convenient way to select fixtures. There is no relation from a cue list back to the group.

I'll try to explain using an example. Your new group with fixtures 1 and 2 is selected by tapping the group in group pool, then you give the two fixtures a value of 42%, this is then stored in a cue. In a few seconds we are going to add fixture 3 and 4 to the group. This doesn't mean that the cue will change. It still only have information for fixtures 1 and 2. Even deleting groups doesn't affect the information stored in cues.

Ok, let's add those two fixtures. Select fixture 3 and 4 and then press: Store Group 2 Please.

Now you are presented with a pop-up that allows us to select the store method used. There are three possibilities. Overwrite, Merge and Remove. These are general store methods you are going to meet throughout the console so I'll take the time now to explain them. 

Overwrite will always replace what is currently stored, with what you are storing now - so you loose the old content. Merge will add what you are storing now to the already existing content. Remove will remove the content in your programmer from the destination. If the destination doesn't have any overlapping content, then it don't do anything.

Since we wanted to add fixtures to our group, we should press Merge - do that. Try to tap the group to check that it actually select fixture 1 to 4.

Move, Copy and Delete

There are three functions that I would like to show you. They are general functions that works on many things, but now is the right time to tell you about them.

Move

You can move the groups around so they are positioned where you like them. 

Press Move and then press the All Dimmers group. Now press on an empty group button. This moved the group to this new location. Now press Move again and then All Dimmers and then All FOH. This doesn't move anything yet. We have now selected to move two groups and the console is waiting for a new location. Press somewhere that have two free buttons. We just moved the two groups next to each other at the new location.

Copy

You can also copy a group. Then you have two identical groups. 

Press Copy and then All Dimmers followed by an empty group button. We have now created a new group. The content is exactly the same as the 'All Dimmers' group. The name ends with a "#2" so the two groups can still be distinguished. The two groups are not connected. If you change the content in one group, then the other is still untouched.

Delete

You can delete a group by pressing Delete and then the group you want to delete. Remember this doesn't affect any cues. You can delete the copy you just made.

Let's make more groups

Ok, let's make some more groups. All the odd numbered fixture in our plot have a warm colored gell and all the even numbered have a cold color.

You know everything needed to create these groups, so I'll just list all the groups needed in a table form:

Number:	Fixtures:	Name:
1	1 to 12	All Dimmers
2	1 to 4	All FOH
3	5 to 12	All Stage
4	5 to 8	Down Stage
5	9 to 12	Up Stage
6	1 + 2 + 5 + 6 + 9 + 10	Stage Right
7	3 + 4 + 7 + 8 + 11 + 12	Stage Left
8	1 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 9 + 11	All Warm Dim
9	2 + 4 + 6 + 8 + 10 + 12	All Cold Dim

 When you are done the Group view should look like this:

Combination selections

With these groups we can do a lot of different combinations.

You can combine two groups simply be pressing them. If you press All FOH and then Down Stage (there's an automatic + function), you have selected fixtures 1 to 8.

You can also use the - key to remove overlapping fixtures from a different group. If you need all the warm dimmers except the ones from front of house (FOH), you could do it like this (do a Clear first):

All Warm Dim - All FOH

First we selected all the warm dimmers and then we removed the FOH ones from our selection.

Previous, Set and Next - the group edition

With a selection of fixtures you can use the Prev and Next keys to step through the group, just like we did when we didn't already have a selection. The difference is that this will only step through the fixtures in the group.

Try to select group 2 (All FOH) and then press Next. This should be the result:

If you keep pressing next you see that you are just jumping through the fixtures in the group - you never select fixture 5.

If you want to reselect the entire group then you can press the Set key.

 

When you feel comfortable (maybe check if you need some more coffee or tea) you should move on to the next chapter, where we are going to store our first cue - yeah it's about time!