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    MrBlue
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Magic Sheet - Change Color Button

I'm trying to create a Magic Sheet for lighting focus of Nutcracker (we do the show every year, and the plot is always the same)

I've input the entire plot into the magic sheet, and have all the channels matched up and so on.

I have "Glow" "Full" "Complete" and "Fix" buttons.

The idea is that with 3 people in Genies focusing the show, 1 op can be at the desk and "Glow" the next fixtures, which will bring them on at 30%.  When they're at the fixture and the LD is ready "Full" will bring them to Full. "complete" will be pushe when the LD is happy with the focus and the tech is done.  "Fix" will notate something is wrong with the fixture and needs attention.

I have "Glow" "Full" & "Complete" mostly working through macros.  it takes the channels selected and tosses them at percentages.  I would also like them to change the colour of the fixture on the Magic Sheet.  This is where I'm coming into problems.

I want to do this without Color Plates, because some of the fixtures have Scrollers or are Moving Lights.

I've spent a few hours today trying to figure out a way to "change color" on a magic sheet through macros, but Magic Sheets don't function through regular key-strokes and "learn" stops when you switch over to the magic sheet.

with "fix" I wanted a "text 4" from patch to have "needs work" attached to the fixture.  "text 4" is a choosable field on the Magic Sheet, but I could not make a macro to add this to a channel.  (I had about  6 failed attempts to make that work, all ended with syntax errors). 

Any help will be greatly appreciated. 

  • 0
    I don't think this will work. I'm not aware of any way to change properties of magic sheet objects by macro. But maybe there is an alternative: what about having 4 intensity palettes that are labeled glow, full, completed and fix. You could have the label show the IP names. You wouldn't need to have macros at all, but the buttons would just be the 4 palettes. Maybe this would do what you want?
  • 0

    I don't see color working for you here, even though it's a great concept.

    You only currently get 3 color options, Object border, object fill, or a link to color from a device that can change color - LED, ML, etc...

    As a work around, how about a macro that changes the text in a patch text column.

    i'm visualizing a specific magic sheet just for focus, with object boxes or instrument symbols that only have the patch database text column enabled that will fill with "working", "Done" and "Fix".  

    Then write macros that respond to a command line address number, else every and all units on a channel are called "Done".

  • 0

    MrBlue said:
    with "fix" I wanted a "text 4" from patch to have "needs work" attached to the fixture.  "text 4" is a choosable field on the Magic Sheet, but I could not make a macro to add this to a channel.  (I had about  6 failed attempts to make that work, all ended with syntax errors). 

    You'll have to enter the Patch screen first to make this work.  If you learn the macro and then clean out the extra you'll get something like this :

    Blind_Patch *

    Select_Last Text4 Fix*

    Live* CLR CLR

    If you wanted to make some REALLY complicated stuff you could probably make the color idea work.  

    Step 1 - Build a custom RGB fixture called "Indicator"  

    Step 2 - Double patch your show with "Indicator" lights some fixed offset away from the rest of your show.   So channel 1 would have an indicator light at ch 401 or something.

    Step 3 - Place indicator lights next to your real lights in the MS and set them up to follow the channel color.

    Hint - You're going to build a Background macro that hits that "Next" button 400 times in the above example.......

    So the trick is to move the channel selection from User 1 (You) to User 0 - Background Macro - that way you don't have to watch all those "next's" clutter up your work flow.

    Macro 1 - Foreground - Select Last Record Only Group 9999*    Macro Button 2*

    Macro 2 - Background - Group 9999* Next* Select Last  Next(s) (This is where you put your 400 Nexts :-)   at Colorpallete Whatever*

    There will be some syntax errors in there somewhere - but I think they can be worked around.   I've done similar syntaxes in the past and they work fine.  

  • 0

    Thanks for your help everyone, I figured it out with your help.

    @ (percentage) *

    Clear_CmdLine Blind Patch *

    Select_Last Text4 (text you want)*

    Clear_CmdLine Clear_CmdLine Live*

    That is the basic macro we will be using for a Focus Magic Sheet.

    We'll set all of our Fixtures to "Unfocused" in Text4 before we start.

    Then as we bring up fixtures there will be a "Glow", "Full", "Done" and "Fix" tag that will be seen on the MS.

    I kept it to 3-4 letter words so that the sheet doesn't look too cluttered.

    The great thing about this, is that we can do a Query and see what's left on the MS and the Live Tables.

    "Glow" takes the Fixture to 20% and labels "Glow"

    "Full" takes the Fixture to 100% and labels "Full"

    "Done" [SNEAK]s the Fixture in time 0 and labels "Done"

    "Fix" takes the Fixture to [OUT] and labels "Fix"

    I wanted "Done" to Sneak so that I'm not looking at cluttered Red 0's on the screens. 

    In the macro the first line is replaced with:

    Sneak Time 0 *

  • 0 in reply to MrBlue
    Glad it worked out. I really like your idea If bouncing into the Patch screen is annoying you could make 2 macros : Macro 1 - Select Last Record Only Group 9999* Macro Button 2* Now you can make your Patch screen macro as a Background macro and apply it to group 9999. It's a bit more work but now from the operators point of view there is nothing strange occurring.
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