Seems like a thousand years ago, my college computer instructor was teaching me how to design smart, flexible software. One topic was the idea of not referencing exact values, but memory locations containing values. This was useful so that if the values in those memory locations changed, anything referencing them in the program would reflect the change.
Which brings me back to lighting! Any modern lighting rig using "aimable" fixtures like moving heads or mirror scanners usually needs to have those fixtures aimed at specific targets often during a show. The trouble is, those targets change slightly depending on the stage setup. I have dozens of scenes programmed into myDMX, and each time I set up on a new stage, I have to spend several minutes tweaking each scene containing my movers so they aim correctly.
I can't think of how to do it in myDMX, but does anyone have a suggestion on how to preset aim locations for movers and reference those instead of exact pan/tilt for each step? It would be so nice to be able to aim all the movers at the guitarist on the left and call that "Position A", front centerstage could be "Position B" and so on. Instead of entering exact pan/tilt numbers for each light in each step of each scene, have a way to access a "Position" reference. That way, no matter where you set up, all you'd have to do is tweak the aiming of the "Positions" and all the scenes would know where to point their lights.
I'm sure the big boys do it something like this, but I've never seen it on any lighting console or software program in my price range, and yet it's a fairly easy logic design that makes total sense!
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