New to ETCnomad.

Question

I am a student learning lighting design. My school has the Element console and I've only used the console to set up my theater plays. And I came across this ETCnomad software and downloaded it on my PC for free from the ETC website. I see that I can save show files even though it's free. Is it possible to save the show files from the PC on an usb stick and load the files to the console(and the other way around)? Do I need to purchase anything? If not, what's the dongle for? Seems like simulating visualization on PC is for purchase, but I have completely no idea how this works...

ueliriegg · Accepted Answer

the software is for free, yes. you can edit files from the console with your nomad and then bring it back to the console or you can start a new showfile in nomad and bring it over to the console. 
you need nomad dongle if you want to use nomad to actually output, i.e. use it to replace a console. as long as you use it offline you don't need the dongle. and also to run viz you don't need a dongle. 
 
nomad has two modes, one is the element mode the other is for the rest of the eos family. there are some functions that are not available in element. it is recommended to use nomad in element mode whenever your editing showfiles that need to go on an element. showfiles created or edited in eos-family mode would still be read on the element, but you might lose some stuff if you used functions not available on element. so using element mode means does functions are not available in nomad in the first place hence no risk of using them and losing stuff afterwards. 
you can choose this mode, while nomad is in the shell (the small window you get after launching nomad). there is a clickable text called "change console mode".