• State Not Answered
  • Date
    Anne S
  • Date
  • Replies 2 replies
  • Subscribers 55 subscribers
  • Views 2441 views
  • Users 0 members are here

Gray-out or otherwise indicate unusable parameters within devices?

Hello all,

A few weeks or eons ago (it has been a busy spring), I had some borrowed fixtures on hand: Elation Platinum FLX. New to me. They can be set up in 3 modes with different DMX footprints (Basic/Standard/Extended), which is pretty typical; but then within the device itself, on a fixture level, they can be run in either Beam Mode or Spot Mode based on a value set in the first gobo wheel. Beam vs Spot operation yields different zoom ranges, for example, which I didn't really take the time to explore, but the irritating thing is that Beam mode disables CMY color mixing and color correction, and the Cobalt doesn't indicate this. The attributes appear to run normally, based on Device Controls and Output displays; they just don't "work." I got it sorted out with a little help from my friends (thanks again, Kirk!), but it wasn't my finest hour.

Now that I've seen it once, I'm more likely to catch this the next time it crops up in an unfamiliar fixture, but I think the desk should tell you you're trying to do something impossible, maybe by graying or whiting out the affected parameters. 

Yours,
Anne

Parents
  • 0

    Most parameters change the range label to "None" when the value of a mode parameter means they don't do anything.

    However, we've found that some types of parameter become very confusing when they have ranges, as this changes the meaning of the # [WHEEL_KEY] shortcut from "absolute value in percent/dmx" to "select range #"

    So we simplify Pan, Tilt, Color Mixing (CMY, RGB etc) and a couple of others to ensure that the # [WHEEL_KEY] does what you'd expect.

    This does mean we don't have any way of displaying the "currently disabled" state for small number of fixtures that have "enable/disable" functions for their colour mixing or movement parameters.

    We'll consider taking another look at this in the future.

Reply
  • 0

    Most parameters change the range label to "None" when the value of a mode parameter means they don't do anything.

    However, we've found that some types of parameter become very confusing when they have ranges, as this changes the meaning of the # [WHEEL_KEY] shortcut from "absolute value in percent/dmx" to "select range #"

    So we simplify Pan, Tilt, Color Mixing (CMY, RGB etc) and a couple of others to ensure that the # [WHEEL_KEY] does what you'd expect.

    This does mean we don't have any way of displaying the "currently disabled" state for small number of fixtures that have "enable/disable" functions for their colour mixing or movement parameters.

    We'll consider taking another look at this in the future.

Children
Related

www.etcconnect.com