Creating Custom Theater

Hello John, Welcome to the forums. This video I am gonna link you too is for Compu live software but my dmx and compu live both use the same 3D program so it should help. Any questions after watching the video and I'll be more than happy to help.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILBKtmFuDDs

Thanks Jingles. That was helpful in how to put the lights on the truss however I'm having even more difficulty in creating the "Room" itself and putting the truss where it belongs. Are there more templates other than Club, Stage, and Concert? I really need just a front truss and 2 diagonal trusses that meet it and extend to the flats at the stagbe corners. Sounds simple enough but I've had no luck. Question, when I setup the stage, do I use the entire room dimensions or just the stage itself. Perhaps that is what I was doing wrong.

Hey John if you know where to find stage settings, that is where you want to tell the 3D the size of the room. And those are the only templates. If you get me a pic of the set up I may have time to build it for you and then you can see how I did it. Let me know.
Sincerely,

Thanks Jingles. I "think" I got it finally. But now I have another question. It seems to me that there is probably a standard in the industry as to how you lay out the lights across the universe. In other words, do you break them up by location, by function, by color, etc.? I'm just looking for a voice of experience to tell me the best way to do this. Thanks.

Nope no standard really. I personally like to address fixtures from left to right and front to back of the stage. But that's just me. The only thing is whatever you have on the my dmx universe grid has to match the actual fixtures addresses. Make sense? Let me know if you have any more questions.
Sincerely,

Jingles,

Okay, need some more advice. I am still a bit up in the air as to whether to buy myDMX or Compu Live and I was hoping that if I told you my application, you could make an educated recommendation.

I am a volunteer parent at my daughter's children's theater. I've been a sound engineer and musician for almost 30 years but honestly know nothing about lights whatsoever. Be that as it may, this is my project.

We will have 15 LED Par CANS and 2 VIZI LED spots on the stage. That's it for now. It's a small theater that seats 100 people.

I really like what appears to be a very simple approach to "operation" in myDMX whereas Compu Live looks complicated to me. That may not be true but those are my first impressions.

I understand that myDMX likely has limitations but honestly I don't really understand what they are. A typical "show" at the theater may have anywhere from 5 to 25 "scenes" but they are largely repetitive when it comes to set and blocking.

Perhaps the major aspect of my decision is that while I'm no light guy, I might be the most technically saavy of the group which means that when I'm not there, someone even less qualified than me will have to be able to operate this. Scary thought!

I have been blown away by the responsiveness from you on this board. If this is how ADJ handles customer service, I'm in!

So...your thoughts?

Ya for all that I would say my dmx for sure. It should be a good controller for that type of venue and stage set up.
Sincerely,

Jingles,

Honestly don't know what I'm doing wrong here but I spend several hours creating and tweaking that 3D version of our theater. I hit the save button in the 3D program - several times - and also made sure I saved the show from the main myDMX window. Now it's not there. There seems to be a disconnect between my "show" and the 3D rendering of it. When I open my show, it always defaults to the "stage" .evs. I'm sure it's supposed to open the 3D that I used with the show when I saved it, right?

What on earth am I doing wrong here?

If you go to file and open in the 3D program an select your saved file does it open then?
Sincerely,

yes, but yesterday's version of the build. I am actually an IT guy for my real job so I'm pretty confident that I saved it, in the correct location. Just to make sure, I searched my entire hard drive for any .evs files but I guess it was some sort of gliche. Not fun, but it happens.

Is the software supposed to hold the association between the myDMX "show" and the 3D rendering that you build for it?

If you set up fixtures in the my dmx program and then create a 3D stage and place your fixtures in the 3D and then save on both the 3D window and the my dmx program, once you re open both of them they should open the same co-related files together. however we have had issues in the past with the 3D "forgetting" the layout. It does suck but it happens. Let me know if this helps?
Sincerely,

so what is the workaround for it? Should I save in one first, then the other, or what?

Isn't really a workaround. Just save your show file and save your 3D file often. Also if you go up too file on the my dmx program window and you see a "automatically start the last saved show file" Do you have that checked? If not check it. Might help.
Sincerely,