Desk and Software Pre Plot Solution?

[Stratozsphere]

Gday all, I am an independent Lighting Designer based in Melbourne Australia. I do a lot of small theatre shows and am looking at purchasing my own desk. Preferably a computer based one (for ease of transport and cost). I would love to pre-plot my entire show offline before even getting to the theatre. Can anyone reccommend a desk / software solution? I currently have the Lanbox LCX. (http://www.lanbox.com/lcx.php) which is fine, but the actual software which is made for the Lanbox I find is pretty clumsy and not reliable.

 

[SteveB]

Gday all, I am an independent Lighting Designer based in Melbourne Australia. I do a lot of small theatre shows and am looking at purchasing my own desk. Preferably a computer based one (for ease of transport and cost). I would love to pre-plot my entire show offline before even getting to the theatre. Can anyone reccommend a desk / software solution? I currently have the Lanbox LCX. (http://www.lanbox.com/lcx.php) which is fine, but the actual software which is made for the Lanbox I find is pretty clumsy and not reliable.

If the actual control system is on a laptop, then you would simply be editing within that program on that laptop, just no DMX out.

Strand has a system called Palette PC that will do what you want, only limitation I see is it's only one universe of DMX. That can be a real pain if you are using moving lights or LED's that you want on a universe separate from a house system.

http://www.strandlighting.com/index...trols&srctype=detail&back=products&refno=2502

ETC is rumored to be coming out with a similar PC/Mac based system, no details as yet. They already have the Eos Off-Line Editor program.

http://www.etcconnect.com/home.aspx?lang=us&region=1

Other then that look at Hog (High End), ChamSys and GrandMA

 

[cbrandt]

The vista software has some nice included plotting tools. I haven't used it personally, but one of my programmers swears by it.

 

[JChenault]

What kind of shows are you doing? Fix cue list or on the fly busking?

Are you looking for visualization, or just a system you can set up before you walk in the dor?

 

[AhClem]

You might want to look at Capture Polar from Capture Sweden. They now offer a free Student Edition that lets you use a 'limited' library of fixtures to become familiar with how to use the software.
While I'm familiar using it with our BlueLite X1 software/hardware, they now have a page with 'Demo Packs' where "... you can download controller and Capture showfiles with matching setups.". They currently have packs for ADB-Freedom, Avolites-Titan, ChamSys-MagicQ, and others.
If you download their "full" version, you will be able to run it in Demo mode which does not allow you to Save your work, but you will be able to experiment with the full Library and the more advanced features.