Ready… GO

This week’s Quick Tip comes from Paul Sonnleitner.

Are you confused about why some presets on the GrandMA apply to some fixtures instead of all fixtures? Understanding the difference between a Universal preset and a Selective preset unlocks some powerful time-saving functionality on the MA Lighting GrandMA.
What’s the difference, you ask? A Selective preset applies only to the fixtures you have in the Programmer when you store, while a Universal preset will expand upon storing to apply to all fixtures of the same type.

When you’ve mixed a beautiful sunset orange, for example, store the color preset as a Universal preset and all fixtures of the same type you mixed it with can now use that preset. If this information is stored as a selective preset, only the fixture or fixtures you used to mix this color will have data associated with this color preset.

To alter the type of preset stored, hold down STORE before selecting the preset destination. In the lower- right corner of the Store options view, you’ll see a toggle that can be set to Universal or Selective. But unless you choose USE AS DEFAULT from the upper right corner of this screen before continuing with your store operation, your selection will be used with the current operation only and will automatically reset to the default value.

As a general rule, I store most presets as universal except Pan/Tilt, Dimmer, and All presets. All fixture of the same type with cyan at 75, and magenta and yellow at zero, for example, will result in the same “Pretty Cyan” coming out of the fixture, like I’d name the color preset. All fixtures of the same type with pan at 50 and tilt at 32, however, will NOT all be “Downstage Center.” To make it easier for me to remember, I’ll usually turn on the “Universal” option from the Store options and set it to USE AS DEFAULT as soon as l start setting up a show. When I’m ready to start programming, I’ll toggle the option back to SELECTIVE and again set it to USE AS DEFAULT. After the initial set-up, most presets a programmer creates will fixture- specific, so there will be little need to alter this store setting except in rare situations.

An additional advantage of properly using universal presets is that as more fixtures of the same type to are added to a show, universal presets will automatically apply to these new fixtures without using AUTO CREATE to clone information. This is a big time saver.
As a final note, be aware that UPDATE also uses this Store option setting when updating presets. If a user has initially stored a preset as selective, EDITing the preset and UPDATing (as long as the Store option is set to Universal) will make it universal.
Good luck, and happy programming!

Quick Tips are exactly what the name should imply. We’re adding these to our blog in an effort to help programmers and operators of all levels. If you’d like to suggest a Quick Tip, drop us a message on this blog, or on our Facebook page, or even via Twitter.

Tags: grandMA programming, tips, Training

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 10:26 am and is filed under MA Series 1 Consoles, Quick Tip Tuesday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.