Sunlite Suite
Group/Individual control of fixtures
Fixture grouping is one of the most powerful tools within our control software.
As you may have noticed, our preprogrammed buttons (movement, color, gobo, effect, etc) operate on all fixtures within a page. If you want to have independent control of your lighting fixtures (assign each a different color, for example), you will find our Fixture Group tools very helpful.
(This function is not available in the software's BEGINNER mode. To change to EXPERT mode, simply go to: Controller menu - Expert mode. Once you are in Expert Mode, go to: Windows menu - Reset positions - Reset to tabs.)
Fixture positions
The sofware allows you to arrange the icons (fixtures) in any way, ideally representing the same layout you have on stage. Simply left-click and hold on a selected fixture (orange) while moving it to its new position. You can arrange them, for example, like the circle shown below.
Creating groups
This tool allows you to create groups of fixtures (stage left, stage right, house lights, etc).
Going back to our example with 4 moving heads arranged in a circle, imagine now that we want to create 2 groups [Mo1 + Mo3] and [Mo2 + Mo4]. Click on the icons to select/unselect until you reach your desired group (also, you could first click on the "ALL OFF" button to unselect all fixtures and then select only Mo1 and Mo3). Once these are selected, click on the "New group" button (red arrow in picture below) and enter any name you want, in this case [Mo1 + Mo3].
There is no limit to the number of groups that can be created in each page. Even when this simple example includes only 4 fixtures, you can imagine the potential of the grouping tool when using a larger number of fixtures.
It is possible to assign shortcut keys F1 through F12 on your keyboard to any of these groups. All you need to do is right click on the group name to access this feature. To trigger a group, you need to select the appropriate page and click SHIFT + F1 on your keyboard, for example.
Using groups / Individual fixture control
The "Fixtures Group" tools allow you to control fixtures individually or using the groups you just created. By default, this tools will be disabled (green arrow above, first button on the toolbar).
There are 3 different modes to use this group/individual control fuction: LIVE, SAVE, and SELECT. By default, group/individual control will be disabled automatically after every action. To allow continuous group/individual control, click on "Return to Disabled mode" (last button of the toolbar) to unselect it.
LIVE mode
To use this mode, select the second button of the toolbar (remember that, by default, LIVE will be disabled after every action unless you click and unselect the last button "Return to disabled").
Back to our 4 Moving Head example, imagine you want to have you 1st group [Mo1 + Mo3] in cyan and [Mo2 + Mo4] in red.
0 - Turn the light beam ON (click on CENTER or any movement button)
1 - Select the LIVE option (2nd button) and release the "Return to disabled" option (last button)
2 - Select the [Mo1 + Mo3] group
3 - Activate the Color Cyan button on your normal fixture page (if you have the 3D visualizer open, you will notice how ONLY fixtures 1 and 3 change color)
4 - Click on the "Invert selection" button (to the left of ALL OFF). This action will unselect the first gruop and automatically select the second
5 - Activate the Color Red button on the page
6 - Disable group/individual control (1st button on the toolbar) to return everything to normal.
7 - Save a new scene/switch AS YOU SEE NOW
LIVE mode is the most versatile function in this toolbar. Most of the time you will be working with preprogrammed buttons and LIVE, then creating scenes/switches AS YOU SEE NOW. During LIVE performances, when "on the fly" control is required, the LIVE button will become very useful.
SAVE mode
As you probably realized, LIVE mode modifies button properties momentarily. The group/individual fixture information is not saved within the button, so that once LIVE mode is disabled, for example, all preprogrammed buttons will work on all fixtures.
If you want to save group information in a button, you will need to use the SAVE and SELECT modes.
Imagine now you want to have your assign the cyan color button exclusively to the 1st group [Mo1 + Mo3] and the red color button exclusively to the second [Mo2 + Mo4].
0 - Turn light beams ON (CENTER or any movement switch)
1 - Select the SAVE option (3rd button) and unselect "Return to disable" (last button)
2 - Select the [Mo1 + Mo3] group
3 - Activate the Color Cyan button on the page
4 - Click on "Invert selection" (to the left of ALL OFF, or select/unselect manually)
5 - Activate the Color Red button on the page
6 - Disable SAVE (1st button of the toolbar)
If you look closely at your 2 color buttons (red and cyan), you will see a small 'S' flag inside. This means that a group (or individual fixture) was assigned and saved into the button, which will not be disabled even when the SAVE mode is no longer active.
If you wish to reset your preprogrammed buttons back to normal, you need to redo the SAVE procedure (except this time you need to select ALL fixtures before you assign them to the button). Using the SELECT mode (explained below) allows you to reset groups in your preprogrammed buttons, also. Remember that, unless you change them, preprogrammed buttons work on all fixtures within the page.
SELECT mode
The SELECT mode works in a very similar way as the SAVE mode, except backwards. In SAVE, we first selected the group, then we selected in what button we wanted it assigned.
In SELECT mode, we first choose the button and then we assign a group to it. This tool is very useful when you have a large number of fixtures and complicated groups, because you can see the groups assigned to each button without the risk of losing them.
SELECT is also very useful during live performances if you want to change the group information inside a button without activating that button.
0 - Turn the light beam ON (CENTER or any movement switch)
1 - Select the SELECT option (4th button) and unselect "Return to disable" (last button)
2 - Select the Color Cyan button pressing "SHIFT + click" (this method will select the button, but will not activate it)
3 - We can see that the [Mo1 + Mo3] group is selected from the previous example
4 - Add the selection of the [Mo2 + Mo4] group
5 - Select the Color Red button using "SHIFT + click" (button selected but not activated)
6 - Add the selection of the [Mo1 + Mo3] group
7 - Disable the SELECT function (1st button of the toolbar)