Yeah, if you could, that would be great. Thanks
Assuming Windows XP or some such, with LightWright 3 or 4 and Expression Off-Line (
EOL) as well as some form of 3.5" floppy drive. Note that you can also get an
ASCII Ch to Dim patch out of
Vectorworks 11 and up.
Also assuming you have saved to the PC HD a file with your favorite
console Macros (using
EOL to do so).
1) Load visiting
console disk to drive, Open
EOL, go to File - Import Show, read the .shw file on the
console disk into
EOL.
2) In
EOL, Convert this file to
ASCII, saving it where you can remember it.
3) In LW (slightly different process in VW), open the file you need to export patch. Go to File - Export -
ASCII Show Patch, give the file a location and name, adding .asc to the file name, click where appropriate.
4) Back to
EOL. Open the .shw file on the HD you've saved as a
Macro file.
5) In
EOL, Convert - Read ACSII, navigating to the
ASCII Cue File you saved. Click on it and a pop-up
screen should come up that reads with a bunch of numbers, then "Data stream successfully processed". Press OK.
6) Save the
current EOL file that has the macros PLUS cues, as a new file.
EOL automatically creates the .shw extension.
7) In
EOL, go back to Convert - Read
ASCII, and navigate to the LW/VW patch file, click on it. Make sure the Same pop-up
screen with (we hope) "Data stream successfully processed".
8) In
EOL - File - Save.
9) Check the
EOL file, you should have the macros, plus cues (Blind-S2 key shows you the
cue list), then check to see if the patch matches what LW is saying.
Effectively, what you are doing is "layering" an LW
ASCII Patch file, on top of an
ASCII Cue file that's been layered to a .shw file with
macro's.
10) Place new disk into disk drive, in
EOL - File - Export. You can now load the disk to any Expression series or
Express console.
Some traps:
- If you are loading to an
Express with a low
channel count - 48/96 with only 192 channels, you cannot import levels for 250 channels. Usually the levels for channels above 192 are stripped off the import.
- Ditto the LW file, it cannot have more channels then the
console.
- Ditto
system size. Neither LW nor the finished .shw file off
EOL can have more then 1024
DMX addresses, which is the
Express limit.
- Show files written on Expression III or Insight III can have more parts in a
cue then an
Express can handle )I believe Expression/Insight III allows 8 parts, where as
Express allows 4 - correct me if this is incorrect) and you can get into trouble. If you have an option, always take an
Express disk if going to an
Express.
- It helps to set up Expression Off-Line as an Expression
console with maximum
channel count. Assuming that the
console is anything with less capacity, it generally works fine as a saved .shw file for any of the
Express series (assuming you've caught the
channel count limit
trap).
- Expression Off-Line will add the .asc extension to a file it writes. Lightwright does not and you should type in the extension. Otherwise, when you go looking for the
ASCII patch file in
EOL, you get tripped up by the "Files of Type"
toggle at the bottom of the pop-up
screen, and you then can't see the file, then you need to change it to All Files to see the patch file.
- If you find yourself needing to do this a lot, it helps to have the PC doing the conversion somewhere convenient to the
console.
Steve B.