This will give you a short tour through all the most basic things you need to know for adding fixtures to the patch, controlling fixtures, creating presets, adding a sequence and using worlds. 

I have chosen to use different symbols when I want you to do different things. If you need to press one of the buttons on the screens then it looks like this: Full Access. If I need you to press a hard button (a button that is physically on the desk) it looks like this: SETUP. If I’m just referring to the button I will put it in quotation marks and use capitalized letters e.g.: “SETUP”. 
If you are supposed to write text on the keyboard I will write it like this: Moving light.
If you are doing this on an onPC or Offline Editor, you need to imagine all the physical buttons, and use the relevant buttons in the program. I will write this as if you where at a real desk (a FullSize). If there are specific differences I will mention it. 
When I write “left touch screen” it’s the same as “Screen 1” on the onPC, “middle touch screen” is “Screen 2” and “right touch screen” is “Screen 3”. If you are at a desk that only got one touch screen, just ignore everything with left, middle and right screens. The same thing applies for the external screen. If you don’t have one, just use the one screen you do have.

This tutorial builds on the first tutorial. If you haven’t made it, I suggest that you do.
If you choose not to, you can download the result of the first tutorial by right-clicking the link below. Save the file and unpack it.

On a grandMA there are many different ways to get from A to B. But to get the best result it’s important that you follow the steps fairly precise. You can always experiment on your own afterwards. Happy programming.

We just got 9 Mac 700 Profiles from Martin. And we want to add them to the patch. This is what the plot looks like now:

Press SETUP followed by Full Access. We want to add a new “fixture layer”. Right-click where it says “New” (underneath “Dimmers”). The new layer should have a meaningful name. Type: Mac700 followed by ENTER. Double-click on “From Library” followed by a single click on the cross (in a square) next to “Martin”. Scroll down and find “MAC700PROF Original” and click on it. Then the screen looks like this:

Don’t change the name. The “Channel Start Id” is the channel number (the dimmer channel) for the dimmer. Adding a number here will add this fixture to the “Channel Sheet”. The “Fixture Start Id” is the fixture number. Adding a number here will add this fixture to the “Fixture Sheet” (we will return to this sheet later). “Quantity” is of course the number of fixtures you want to add to this layer. The “Auto Patch” is a feature (we used in the first tutorial), that automatically assigns the fixtures the first availed DMX number. We are not going to use this feature now. 

Let’s get back to our new fixtures. We want the fixtures to have the same fixture number as channel number. And let’s start with the number 111. So that goes both in “Channel Start Id” and “Fixture Start Id”. The quantity is 9 and click on the Auto Patch’s “On” button so it toggles to “Off”. 
Then you can press the Create! button. If we where to exit the “Full Access” now, the desk would warn us that we haven’t given our new fixtures any patch number (DMX start address).

Let’s begin with changing the channel and fixture numbers so they match the numbers in your light plot (111, 112, 113, 121, 122, 123, 131, 132 and 133). The first 3 fixtures are fine. Right-click on the channel number 114 and use the pop-up (called “the calculator”) to change the number to 121. In the same way change the channel number for 115 to 122 and 116 to 123. Ok, let’s use some of the desks magic. Press and hold from number 117 drag to 119 and release. Now right-click in the blue selection and change the number to 131 and press ENTER. Notice how the desk automatically changes the numbers to 131, 132 and 133. Pretty neat! Let’s make more magic.
At the moment the channel numbers doesn’t match the fixture numbers. Let’s change this real easy. 
Make a selection of all the fixture numbers using the same drag-and-release technique as before. Right-click with the mouse and in the calculator press the button Channel Id, and there you go! Now it should look like this:

But we still need to assign the actual patch numbers. Right-click in the first empty cell in the patch column. This is the patch pop-up:

The left part of it shows you the selected fixtures/channels. The “Id C/F” is the channel and fixture id. “Name” doesn’t need any explanation. Then it has a column named “STROBE”. This is the attribute off the fixtures first DMX channel. If you had a different type of fixture were you need to patch both the fixture and e.g. a external dimmer channel, then you would have another column with that attribute.
The right part is where you select what DMX address the attribute should have. The first block:

allows you to enter a patch directly using the buttons on your desk. Press  2   .   1  ENTER. Now right-click on the next fixture with no patch number (112). The desk automatically shows you the next available address in the same universe as the previous fixture so all we need is to press Patch!. You can choose to use the soft buttons to select the universe and address. You do what you think is the easiest way for you. Select (by using drag-and-release method) the remaining fixtures. Notice the list on the far right. It shows you all the unused DMX numbers. 
Press where it says “2(B) 47”. 

And then all you fixtures are patched. Save you patch by pressing the big blue cross in the upper right corner, and then Save. Close the “Setup view” also using the blue cross.

Next we are going to control our fixtures and then it’s an advantage to see what is happening. I prefer using the four encoders under the right touch screen, so I would place the “Fixture Sheet” on the right touch screen. Remove the “Channel Sheet” (from the “TutorialBasic1”) by pressing the yellow round dot in the upper left corner and then press Delete Window. Then create a new window that fills the entire touch screen. The one we need is in the first column number four from the top (in the “Create a window” pop-up) called “Fixture”. To make this easier for us we need something called “Preset Control”. Press the yellow dot again, but his time instead of deleting, make sure that preset control is “On” (it’s found under the “Display Layer”). It should look like this:

Close the “Fixture Sheet Options” pop-up by pressing the blue cross in the pop-up’s upper right corner.
The last thing we need is to activate “Auto Cols” (it’s active when the background is dark), it is in the upper right corner.
Now you touch screen should look like this: 

To control the fixtures we need to select them. Here we have made it a little easy for ourselves. The fixtures have the same channel number, so we don’t need to press the “FIXTURE” button before the number.
Instead press  1   1   1  ENTER. When selected you can add a dimmer value as you have learned in the previous tutorial or you can use the encoder to change it. When you want to change a different attribute you need to select it. Press the up arrow next to “Dimmer”, this shows the different attributes this fixture type got (it is called the “Attribute Select pop-up”):

Select “Pan/Tilt” by pressing it. Notice how your encoder changes function according to what attribute you have selected. With the “Pan/Tilt” your encoders look like this: 

Turning the encoders changes the values. Turning them with the encoder pressed changes the value faster. A different way to select attribute is to press on of the green attribute buttons: 

Notice how some of them have a red square and some a black one. The red one indicates that you have changed values in that attribute. This will be saved if you press “STORE” (don’t do it).
Press the Gobo button. Now instead of turning the first encoder, just press it shortly. This is where the calculator proves its power. Underneath the usual buttons with numbers etc. there is a lot of buttons that changes according to your selections. When gobo is selected you have easy access to all the different gobos. Select the one called "Water" and confirm you choice by pressing ENTER. 
When our fixture has more than one gobo wheel you can choose the others by using the attribute select pop-up or you can press this button:

This gives you the next attribute (in this example “Gobo2”). The last thing I will introduce you to is how to control colors. Press the preset button Color. The first thing you see is the attribute for color wheel 1. This works as all the other attributes. Now try to select “ColorMix” using the “Attribute Select pop-up”. This assigns Cyan, Magenta and Yellow to the first three encoders (in that order). Then you can control these three attributes manually. Now select the one called “ColorPicker”. It should look like this: 

This allows you to select any color, ether by pressing the screen or by using the first two encoders to move the marker around the color field. The third encoder controls how dark the color is. Overall there are three different ways to change the color using the “ColorPicker”. The current one is called HSB (Hue, Saturation and Black). If you turn the fourth encoder the window changes. The next one (I will describe) is called RGB:

This gives you the option to change the color using Red, Green and Blue. Whatever method you use the current color output is shown in the box next to the HSB, RGB or CMY and directly under the button with “ColorPicker”. The last method is called CMY. It looks like this:

This one is basically the same as the “ColorMix” method. You can change between all these methods as you like. It’s just a matter of preference. Take some time experiment with the fixture controls. When you’re done clear your programmer.

A preset is a way to store a set of values. There a 10 different groups of presets. They are named “Pan/Tilt”, “Dimmer”, “Gobo”, “Color”, “Beam”, “Focus”, “Control”, “Shapers”, “Video” and “All”.
Basically the preset groups can only store their own kind of info i.e. the “Pan/Tilt” preset group can only store info about Pan/Tilt values. The exception to this is the “All” presets. They can store info about all the types of values. The “Preset” windows are a lot like the “Group” window except if you have nothing selected the first time you press a preset button, the desk selects the fixtures/channels that can use that preset. If you press a second time the desk assigns the values to the fixtures/channels. For this tutorial I will use many different preset groups. And to avoid filling all view buttons (the six buttons at the right side of the touch screens) with presets I will introduce you to a different window first. It’s called “View Pool”. The view pool contains all the different views (window setup) in the desk. They are all represented with their own button in the view pool. Enough explaining let’s get cracking. 

On the left touch screen press the second free cell from the right on the bottom row. In “Create a Window” select the one called “Views”. You now got a window with the View “headline” and one view button (it probably already got some content) use the encoder next to the screen and scroll until the button is empty (or until you got a nice button number – I use number 11). Now we are going to move that window. Click and hold the left mouse button on the views “headline”, drag it to the left side of the screen and release. Place the mouse on the line between the right side of the views window and the free cell next to it (the double-ended arrow appears next to the mouse pointer) click and hold the left mouse button and drag to the right side of the screen. Now you got 9 new view buttons!
Press the upper left free cell. Create the window called “1: Pan/Tilt”. Press STORE followed by the first free view button (in the button row). Name the view “Pan/Tilt”. Press EDIT followed by the Pan/Tilt “headline” (this is the same as right clicking on that button) press DELETE WINDOW. Now create a new window with the “2: Dimmer” presets. Repeat everything above for all the different presets except the “9: Video Presets” until your screen looks like this:

We didn’t make any “Video” view because they are used for storing video parameters. And we don’t have any with our current fixtures.

In just a few seconds we are going to store a preset. But to make sure we save them correctly we need to examine the “Store options”. Press and hold the STORE button. After approx. 1 second the “Store Options pop-up” appears. The only thing we are interested in is the “Preset Options” they look like this:

Press the buttons until it looks like the buttons above. When you are happy press Save as default next to the blue cross. Finish by letting go of the “STORE” button and press ESCAPE (we are not storing anything right now).

All right, try placing all your moving lights in different positions. When you are happy, make sure you can se the preset group called “Pan/Tilt”. Press STORE and the first preset button. Now instead of values our fixture sheet shows “Pan/Tilt 1”. This is the name of the first pan/tilt preset. Move your lights to different position. Now press STORE PRESET  1   .   2  ENTER. This creates preset “Pan/Tilt 2”. The “1 .” is a reference to the pan/tilt presets (you may recall the window you created was called “1: Pan/Tilt”). Move your light and make one more pan/tilt preset. Clear your programmer. Select the first Mac 700 (Fixture 111). Change the color to a blue one using the ColorPicker. Press and hold the STORE button. In the “Store Options” press the button “Selective” so it changes to “Universal” now store it to the first color preset. So what’s the difference to the 2 different store options? All the Pan/Tilt presets we made with the “Selective” option. This means that the presets only applies to the fixtures that were selected when you stored the preset. The “Universal” means that the preset applies to all fixtures of the same type. Make 2 more color presets.
Make 3 different gobo presets.
Clear your programmer. Press:  1   1   1  THRU  1   3   3  ENTER ENTER STORE PRESET  1   0   .   1  ENTER. Now you have made an “All” preset that contains all the default values of the fixtures (The “ENTER ENTER” activates all parameters of the fixtures). You should have presets that look something like this (I have rearranged the view so all the created presets are visible):

This is what we need for making our new second sequence.

Clear your programmer. Press the first Pan/Tilt preset twice. Now press STORE and one of the buttons below fader 3. Now we got our second sequence. Let’s build some more into it. Select fader 3 by pressing SELECT followed by one of the buttons bellow the fader. 
Press Gobo 1 Color 1 STORE ENTER. Then we got the “Save pop-up”. 

Here you choose how you want to store things. Press “Merge”. That was our first cue. Clear the programmer. Press Pan/Tilt 2 Pan/Tilt 2 Gobo 2 Color 2 STORE ENTER. This time choose “Create Second Cue” in the “Save pop-up”.
Make a third cue with “Pan/Tilt 3”, “Gobo 3” and “Color 3”. The last cue I need you to make is a cue containing the “All” preset and all the cue times need to be 0 seconds! Clear your programmer.

Select your first sequence. Now press the green name field above the fader (where it “Seq 1”):

The next screen you see presents you with all the options for that fader (called “Executor”). There are a lot of different options, but right now we are only interested in is the size of the executor. Change that to 2. Now we need to change the button assignment. The buttons and fader can have a lot of different functions (explaining those goes beyond the scope of this tutorial). Press where it says “Xfade” and in the small pop-up select “Rate”. Press where it says “Go-” and choose the option called “Rate 1”. Change the rest of the buttons so they end up looking like this:

Now that you are here change the “Restart Options”. Press “Track from Last” so it changes to “Release from Last”. Close the options window by using the blue cross. What is the rate fader? Well, the rate fade is used for changing the overall speed of the fade. You can speed it up or slow it down to a complete stop. The times are not changes in the sequence permanently, just adapted to the fader position. The button called “Rate 1” resets the fader to the mid position where all the times are back at their sawed times. The “<<<” and “>>>” steps one cue back and forward accordingly without time.

Have you noticed that we didn’t save any dimmer values to the fixtures in the second sequence? We are going to put those in our first sequence. And we are going to do some sequence linking. 

In your “Sequence Executor window” select the button called “Loops & Links”. Now it should look something like this:

Right-click in the link cell for cue 1 and press GOTO CUE  1  EXECUTOR  1   .   3  ENTER. In the link cell for cue 3 right-click and write (using the keyboard): Goto cue 2 exec 1.3. In cue 4 the link is for cue 3 on executor 1.3. And in cue 6 we need a link to cue 4. When you’re done it should look like this:

Now press the big yellow go button. Notice that booth sequences go to cue number 1. That’s the link doing the trick. Press the button with the function “>>>”. Turn on your moving light at full. Press UPDATE. Now there are two possible sequences to update. Make sure you update number one (if you have done everything the way I told you to) you should be able just to press Update Cue, otherwise click on the line called “1 Seq 1”. Go to cue 6. Notice that the moving light gets the dimmer value “All 1”. This is actually the value 0%. But to make sure that no matter what they go to 0, let’s store this value in this sequence also. Press:  1   1   1  THRU  1   3   3   .   .  UPDATE. Now you can see that you also have the option to update the preset. Don’t do that; just update the cue in sequence 1. Clear your programmer and try moving back and forward in your sequence to see how the link works.

One last little treat for you is the worlds. You can use the worlds to limit your own (and others) access to channels or fixtures. Find a empty space on your screens and create a new window called “Worlds”. It looks like this:

Press:  1  THRU  4   0  ENTER STORE followed by the first world button. Name it “Dimmers”. Clear your programmer. Now press: FIXTURE  1   1   1  THRU  1   3   3  ENTER STORE followed by world button number two. Name this “Moving Light”. By using the “Fixture” instead of “Channel” you also get every attribute attached to the fixtures (not just the dimmer attribute). Now you actually got three worlds! The two you created and then there is a default world called “Full”. Select the one called “Dimmers”. Now try to press:  1   1   1  ENTER. It doesn’t work and they have disappeared from the fixture sheet. If you select “Moving Light” you can’t control the dimmers. You can still run sequences and the cues will load all their content (Dimmers and Moving Light) as if you were in the “Full” world. The only effect the worlds have is what you can select, manipulate and store.

Press: BACKUP BACKUP (as double-clicking a mouse button). This is a fast way to store your show.

That was it! You have leaned to make changes to the patch, controlling fixtures, creating and use presets, linking sequence and creating and use worlds.

In the next tutorial you will learn to control multiple sequences, the difference between Tracking and Non-tracking and setting up the stage.