Fixture types and placed fixtures
Two words that get mixed up constantly. A fixture type is what a lamp is. A fixture is one of them, hanging in your scene.
- Fixture type
- A card in the Library: one profile in one DMX mode, such as Robin 300E Spot · Mode 3. It comes from a GDTF or OFL file and says what the device can do: its channels, its wheels and gobos, its movement ranges, its body and optics. The library is shared, and so is every type in it
- Fixture
- One unit placed in this scene, with its own name and number, patch, position, rotation, layer, position name and group, and its own Control settings. Forty-eight fixtures can share one type
What belongs where
On the type, shared by every fixture using it: the channel layout, what each channel does, the wheels and their slots, the body and the optics. To change any of that you need a different file, not a different setting.
On the fixture, for this unit only: everything in Properties (name, number, patch, position, rotation, invert and swap of pan and tilt) and everything in Control (intensity, gel, lamp, channel values).
Changing a fixture's type
Select one or more fixtures and use Change type in Properties to swap them for another type. A different DMX mode is a different type, so this is also how you change mode. Only the selected fixtures change; every other fixture of the old type stays as it was.
Changing a type itself reaches every fixture using it. Re-importing the same fixture file refreshes its card, and with it every fixture, in every scene, patched against that card. That is the reason a shipped type is never overwritten by an upload.
Importing a type you already have
Importing a GDTF for a fixture the library already ships adds a card, it does not replace one. A scene points at the type it was patched against, and replacing a shipped type would silently change every rig using it. Patching is where you choose between the two cards; see Library.
The mode is part of the type
A 16-channel mode and a 32-channel mode of the same lamp are two types. They are not interchangeable in a patch: channel numbers move and functions appear or disappear, and choosing the wrong one gives results that are wrong without any error. That is why every mode is its own card in the Library.