Original LXSeries Forum

A student working with LXFree and our new Ion board asked if the information from LXFree could be translated into a graphic form that could be imported to the Ion and become magic sheets. I laughed but then I got thinking. I agreed to drop the idea into this forum to see if others had similar thoughts and possible approaches that could speed the process of creating magic sheets from plots. We already import patch and labels using LXConsole to output ASCII directly to the Ion show files. Clean and fast!

My students will enjoy seeing this idea bounce around.

Lloyd

A quick search of ETC's website did not turn up any specification for creating magic sheet files. Your students could possibly research that. With a published file format, it may be possible to add some kind of export from LXBeams.

The problem of generating a designer's magic sheet is that there are many ways to arrange the information. That's one reason why the group summary report does not generate a complete graphical magic sheet. Selecting a group in the report and choosing "Copy" will show the copy options panel. This allows you to copy a graphic representing the group. The graphic falls into one of several major types. One, maps channel locations to a small version of the stage. That works for dance booms and sidelight. But, front light areas make more sense to be mapped to the focus rather than light's location. Finally, sometimes you just want a list of channels and what their use is. Each one of these three types has sub-options for how the graphic will be created.

Using the copy options panel, you can separately copy and paste graphics from the group summary report into a drawing to make a graphical magic sheet. It helps organize the information. But, because the graphic representation options change for each group (not to mention the arrangement of groups on the magic sheet page), automatically generating a graphical magic sheet remains elusive.

Graphical magic sheets containing channel control text fields can be used to control LXConsole via OSC from LXBeams. And, in the latest build of LXBeams, they can display a level and receive level information from LXConsole via OSC as well.

Thanks! I had missed the copy from Group Summary feature. That is a great way to organize information to put into the Ion magic sheet, and it will help students to learn the process of organizing a plot for rapid programing. Once again I'm learning new tricks.