Vintage Lighting Patching a Strand Mantrix dimmer

[dolphinmother]

I am helping a friend who is temporarily responsible for the lighting in a local high school auditorium. The previous auditorium manager had the board patched but took any setup paperwork with him. There are 48 channels on the Strand Mantrix board and there are 72 circuits available. Patch 1 gave us access to about a third of the lights that are theoretically available, patch 2 gave us about half. This auditorium gets a lot of use and we have gotten through two performances, but we really need to figure out how to patch in the rest of the lights. To make it more interesting, there is no chart for circuitry. The manual (in the advanced chapter) gives very skimpy instructions on patching, and I would appreciate any help we can get. I am not sure how I got from Patch 1 to Patch 2, and we're afraid to experiment any more for fear or losing what we have. Any suggestions?

 

[techieman33]

I have a mantrix 2s at work that we use a focus console. Ours doesn't have 2 patches though. If it's like the 2s patching is really easy. To clear the patch I usually just patch everything to 0 at the start. To do that you would do dimmer number > dimmer number @ 0. Then to patch it's the same thing dimmer number > dimmer number @ channel number to patch a group of dimmers. Or you could do dimmer number + dimmer number + dimmer number until you have all you want selected then @ channel number. To patch a submaster you bring up the look you want then press the hold button and move the submaster fader all the way up and back down then release the hold button. At least that's how I remember subs working, it's been a long time since I've actually programmed one.

 

[venuetech]

to get a default 1 to 1 patch hold the C button and key the board off then on
this would be dimmer 1 assigned to channel 1. this would get you up to 48 dimmers working.
to get dimmers 49 - 72 working you need to assign them to one or more control channels.
the key strokes would look like this ( 49 > 72 @ 48 * ) this would assign 24 dimmers to the control of channel 48
read the keystrokes as:
+ plus
> thru
@ at
* enter

group control of like fixtures and purpose to a single control channel.
for example I have 4-6"fresnels that act together to form a blue down wash on the first electric. I can control these from one channel. the patch would be ( 18 + 22 + 16 + 20 @ 12 * ) this would have 5 dimmers patched to channel 12 (dimmer 12 is still patched to channel 12) so i can now go back and patch dimmer 12 to another channel or to zero.

what you need to do is to document the lighting as hung. you can do this with pencil and paper
a long line represents the position, a large letter or number represents the fixture the circuit/dimmer is noted near the fixture.
later you can draft up a formal plot, till then this will get you the basic info needed.

This is a quick plot of a space I work with. Took all of five minutes.
It is not very good looking but it gets me the info I need to make the formal vectorworks plot.
From this a "channel hookup" would be created