Touring and Change Fixture Type questions

You've had some good advice there.

I'd just add that if you replicate fixtures to increase your fixture count for a show, then you will have to add these new fixtures into your groups as that will not happen automatically. Also, if your fixture count reduces you may want to remove the non-existent ones from your groups otherwise you will have issues with fanning, grouping and buddying when focusing.

Also, remember that you can replicate then change type. If you turn up at a venue which has some led pars being used for some structural lighting (internal building features, PA scrims at a festival etc.) then you could replicate your wash fixtures, then change type to the led fixtures to quickly include these extra units in your show.

As Cormac said above, if you know your show is going to be run on many different rigs with different fixture types it is sensible to bear this in mind when doing your initial programming. Use parameters and effects that will be available everywhere you go, there's no point using fancy beam effects in a VL3500 Wash FX (for example) if most of the time you're going to have basic wash fixtures that cannot duplicate that.

Whatever happens, there will be some touching up to do. Gobo palettes will need to be updated. I find it best to include ALL gobo wheels in palettes, so if your look originally uses a gobo from wheel 1 but you now have to use fixtures where the most appropriate gobo is in wheel 2 then you only have to update the palette rather than editing cues. If you are preprogramming in a visualiser, then it can be useful to use a VL3000 initially as it has three gobo wheels. If you use a fixture with only two, then if you have to use a fixture with three the third will not appear in your cues as it was not in the original palette.

In a similar vein, moving from CMY to a fixed colour wheel can introduce issues. If the original fixture had no colour wheel then there is no data for it in the palettes and cues, so you will find your fixtures in white in all cues even after updating the palettes. I'd love to see this addressed in a future software update.

You've had some good advice there.

I'd just add that if you replicate fixtures to increase your fixture count for a show, then you will have to add these new fixtures into your groups as that will not happen automatically. Also, if your fixture count reduces you may want to remove the non-existent ones from your groups otherwise you will have issues with fanning, grouping and buddying when focusing.

Also, remember that you can replicate then change type. If you turn up at a venue which has some led pars being used for some structural lighting (internal building features, PA scrims at a festival etc.) then you could replicate your wash fixtures, then change type to the led fixtures to quickly include these extra units in your show.

As Cormac said above, if you know your show is going to be run on many different rigs with different fixture types it is sensible to bear this in mind when doing your initial programming. Use parameters and effects that will be available everywhere you go, there's no point using fancy beam effects in a VL3500 Wash FX (for example) if most of the time you're going to have basic wash fixtures that cannot duplicate that.

Whatever happens, there will be some touching up to do. Gobo palettes will need to be updated. I find it best to include ALL gobo wheels in palettes, so if your look originally uses a gobo from wheel 1 but you now have to use fixtures where the most appropriate gobo is in wheel 2 then you only have to update the palette rather than editing cues. If you are preprogramming in a visualiser, then it can be useful to use a VL3000 initially as it has three gobo wheels. If you use a fixture with only two, then if you have to use a fixture with three the third will not appear in your cues as it was not in the original palette.

In a similar vein, moving from CMY to a fixed colour wheel can introduce issues. If the original fixture had no colour wheel then there is no data for it in the palettes and cues, so you will find your fixtures in white in all cues even after updating the palettes. I'd love to see this addressed in a future software update.